Since August 2014, a leopard known as Tazeh Ghaleh had been attacking domestic animals near a village in northeastern Iran. Located just a few kilometers from the Turkmenistan border in the Kopet Dagh region, a global high-diversity hotspot, the village is surrounded by rolling terrain with juniper trees distributed sparsely on slopes. Between mid-August and mid-December 2014, the leopard killed 15 shepherd dogs, or one dog in every 8 days.

During the preceding summer, when most of the local herds spent the night out in the pastures, the leopard took mainly small livestock such as sheep and goat. After October, daytime grazing was concentrated around the village and herdsmen kept their animals in properly built corrals inside the village during the night. In response, the leopard switched its depredation from livestock to dogs. Moreover, the leopard attacked three people when they tried to approach it. Locals became frightened and avoided leaving their houses at night.

At the same time, in October, they reported the situation to the local authorities, seeking a solution to the unusual loss of dogs. Experts from Iran’s Department of the Environment applied a variety of methods to attempt to resolve the problem by keeping the leopard away from the village. In addition to providing relevant information to the locals – particularly on what to do if they encountered a leopard in the wild – they tried making fires around the village, placing gunpowder charges around sites at high risk, and shooting into the air to frighten the leopard, all of which failed to stop the leopard from killing dogs. Consequently, in December 2014, the DoE concluded that the leopard might be a young and inexperienced male, which could account for its activity near an inhabited area.

The Foundation team deployed foot-snares and captured the leopard. Its teeth were yellow, with well-worn canines and incisors. Most of the lower incisors were missing, indicating that it was an old adult leopard, with an age estimated to be between 10 and 15 years. Accordingly, it was decided that rather than fitting the leopard with a GPS collar and transferring it to a nearby reserve, the best course was to give it intensive veterinary care and treatment if there was to be any chance of reintroducing it to the wild. The leopard was therefore taken to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Tehran for treatment.