Pallas' Cat in Iran
Historical records in the country are scarce. Pocock (1951) referred to one skin in the British Museum from the area of Meshed [Mashhad] in the Khorasan Province, north-eastern Iran. Members of the 1962–63 Street Expedition found only one skin in Tehran, and learned of two individuals in the Tehran Zoo from an unknown location (Lay 1967). Two decades later, Etemad (1985) reported two more records in the Khorasan Province, viz in the Tajan River valley and near the city of Sarakhs, and one near the Arax River in north-western Iran.
Several records were reported since the turn of the century. Aghili et al. (2008) sighted Pallas' Cats in the Kopet Dag Mountains in 2004, and knew of an individual captured in 2008 near Tabriz in the Azerbaijan Province. In 2008, the first Pallas' Cat was photographed in the Khojir National Park by a camera-trap (Chalani et al. 2008). Karami et al. (in press) report sightings in the southern foothills of the Alborz Mountains, photographic records in the Qom Province, and capture and release records in the Zagros Mountains, in the Yazd and Kerman Provinces as far south as the Lalehzar Mountains.
In the following map,
markers point to locations where Pallas' Cats were recorded after 2000;
the 
anted markers indicate areas where they were sighted prior to the turn of the century. For further information about individual locations : click on the marker to zoom in.
References
- Aghili, A., Masoud, R., Murdoch, J. D., Mallon, D. P. 2008. First Record of Pallas's Cat in Northwest Iran
Cat News 49: 8–9. - Chalani, M., Ghoddousi, A., Ghadirian, T., Goljani, R. 2008. First Pallas's Cat Photo-trapped in Khojir National Park, Iran. Cat News 49: 7.
- Etemad, E. 1985. The mammals of Iran (in Persian). Second Volume. Iranian Department of the Environment, Tehran
- Karami, M., Ghadirian, T., Faizolahi, K. in press. The Atlas of Mammals of Iran. University of Tehran Publications, Tehran.
- Lay, D. M. 1967. A Study of the Mammals of Iran Resulting from the Street Expedition of 1962–63. Fieldiana Volume 54. Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.
- Pocock, R. I. 1951. Catalogue of the Genus Felis Taylor and Francis, London.
Locations published in The Atlas of Mammals of Iran provided by Taher Ghadirian. Text and map by Angie Appel, reviewed by Arash Ghoddousi in May 2013.
Suggested citation:
Appel, A. 2013. Pallas' Cat: distribution in Iran. Pallas' Cat Working Group.