Although the Future4Leopards Foundation is conducting cutting-edge scientific work on the ground, the Foundation team and experts around the world are fully aware that science alone cannot protect the big cats. Intensive action is essential if long-term solutions are to be found. The Foundation is therefore working closely with local hunters (and poachers) and with people who are illegally hunting the leopard’s prey, such as urial and ibex. Many meetings have been held so far.

On 27 May 2016, the Kalat Bureau of the Department of the Environment organized its first seminar meeting for local hunters in the town’s main hall. The small town of Kalat is located near the Ors-Sistan Protected Area, a main reserve for wildlife adjacent to the Turkmenistan border and a short distance southeast of Tandoureh National Park, with which it is linked through another reserve. The Foundation was able to fund this gathering with generous support from donors. Additional resources are sought to organize the next seminar in Tandoureh, aimed at bringing hunters and rangers face to face to share their concerns and to discuss any partnership that might helpfully be formed. The aim of the Kalat seminar was to raise local hunters’ awareness about the leopard, its prey, and nature conservation in general. Of the almost 110 local hunters invited, 60 came to the event.

At the gathering, useful information on topics such as government regulations, the impact of hunting on wildlife and on the leopard and its ecology, religious aspects of conservation and more was presented to the hunters who attended. Following the meeting, hunters and rangers were invited to take lunch together, giving the opportunity for each to get to know the other side better, and each hunter was presented with a stunning image of the area’s wildlife as a gift.

A recent prey survey revealed the existence of some 700 wild ungulates in the Ors Sistan Protected Area as well as 10 to 15 leopards in an area of 1,000 square kilometers, indicating a high poaching pressure on the local wildlife population.

Although the Protected Area is extremely understaffed in terms of the number of rangers, they were successful in stopping 26 instances of poaching during 2015. Therefore, the Foundation decided to extend its support by engaging local hunters to enhance poaching control in the vast range of leopard-inhabited mountain landscapes along the border with Turkmenistan.