Anatolian Pars taped after decade

VAN

An Anatolian Pars, an endangered leopard subspecies of Iranian Pars, has been spotted for the first time in a decade, the provincial directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks in the eastern province of Van has announced.

The last time Anatolian Pars were taped was in 2013, one in the Kaçkar Mountains in the Black Sea region and another in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır.

The local authorities in Van broadcast footage of an Anatolian Pars captured by a camera trap, but did not declare the place the animal was seen to protect it from hunters and poachers.

Officials only said, “Pars has been spotted in four different locations” in a Twitter post on May 25.

Anatolian Pars is a subspecies of Iranian Pars living in Anatolia. French zoologist M.A. Valenciennes was the first person to give this endangered species a scientific name in 1856.

The existence of Anadolu Pars turned to a myth in Turkey in the 20th century, when only one animal was found and killed in 1974 in the capital Ankara.

It was considered that Anatolian Pars had gone extinct for years until 2013 when two of them were spotted.

In 2019, a zoologist published three black and white photos, alleging that the animal seen in the photos was an “Anatolian Pars,” but scientists doubted the claim as the photos were nebulous and the animal was hard to detect.