The caracal in Iran-current state of knowledge and priorities for conservation

We performed a comprehensive review of existing literature referencing aspects of caracal ecology and natural history, including peer-reviewed papers and grey literature, as well as an extensive attempt to collect unpublished reports and field observations by interrogating with Iranian biologists, and trained rangers, taxidermists, and hunters. Finally, we briefly reviewed a large dataset of camera-trap surveys aimed at the Asiatic cheetah Acinonyx jubatus venaticus between 2002 and 2013. Following Moqanaki et al. (2010), we assessed reliability of each record individually by considering whether any hard evidences (e.g. photo, video, carcass, museum specimen of known origin, genetic sample) are present, or only soft evidences are available. We considered all such records before 2000 as ‘historical’, and classified hard evidences as ‘C1’, and soft evidences as ‘C2’. The remaining ambiguous records were not considered in this study.