Dashtestan Persian Leopard Project
Together with local communities in Dashtestan County, Boushehr Province, recently (in autumn 2015) we have started the Persian leopard participatory monitoring and conservation program in one of the southernmost parts of the Persian leopard distribution range in Southwest Asia.
A very main and first step in this program was to hold an opening workshop with participants from various villages in the project site. Subsequently, a workshop was planned and held in Eram District with the main focus on: introduction to the program aims and scopes, participatory mapping of the resources in the area, learning about environmental changes across the site during the past years, identification of main problems (of local people) relating to carnivores (e.g. livestock-carnivores conflicts) and solving the problem trees. Also, as a request of local people, two rangers have been employed to stay continuously in the region to monitor the area.
Worth mentioning that the current project has been developed as a request of local communities to save the Persian leopard in this area and thus, the project activities are in progress in a very significant participatory level.
