Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin (ISSN 0178 – 6288) . Number 121, January 2015, pp. 1-20. | Page 7

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The leopards of Palestine’s southern regions were totally unknown between the
1930s and 1964. In April of the latter year, however, an adult female leopard was
killed by a Beduin in Wadi Al-Sial (Tze’elim), Jerusalem (Judean) Desert; the
Beduin reported that her two cubs had fled the scene. In early 1967 Beduins
again killed a young male leopard at Ain Al-Ghuweir (Einot Qaneh), the West
Bank of Jordan River (Khalaf-von Jaffa 1987, 2001, 2005).
A third subspecies, the Sinai or Jarvisi Leopard (Panthera pardus jarvisi) lives in
the Jerusalem (Judean) Desert in Palestine. This subspecies was described by
Pocock in 1932. The type specimen is in the British Museum collection, and it was
obtained in Sinai, and presented by Col. C. S. Jarvis. In the end of 1984, 25 adults
were known to live in an area of 2,000 square km, which was declared a nature
reserve in 1973 (Khalaf-von Jaffa 1987, 2001, 2005).
Palestine’s leopards appear to be making a dramatic increase and expanding into
formerly unoccupied territories. Leopards have penetrated much of the southern
half of Palestine, from the Ein Gedi region near the Dead Sea, all the way down
to the Elat Mountains. They are also seen on the Egyptian Sinai border in the
Wadi Faran (Paran) region (Khalaf-von Jaffa 1987, 2001, 2005).

Turkish Zoologists examining the body of the Anatolian Leopard (Panthera pardus
tulliana Valenciennes, 1856) which was killed in the Turkish Diyarbakir Çınar District
on 03.11.2013.
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