Asiatic cheetah is a highly endangered subspecies of which only less than 100 remain in the world, and it is now found only in Iran. One of its main habitats in this country is Khar Turan National Park.
Khar Turan, located 140 km to the south-east of Shahrood along Tehran-Mashhad Road and southeast of the Iranian city of Shahrood, is considered to be the Africa of Iran. From its low fields to its mountains, there are habitats of diverse and rare wildlife including mammals such as deer and Pallas’s cats, birds such as Houbara, Pleske’s ground jay, and White-eyed buzzard, and reptiles such as Desert Monitors, Jaafari snakes and Iranian horned snakes, etc. Still, Khar Turan’s wildlife is not important just because of the aforementioned rare species, but also for its Asiatic cheetah and Iranian zebra.
