#distribution maps

Not so fast.

So:

In early 2022, it was announced that only 12 Persian cheetahs, the last of the cheetahs to roam anywhere in all of Asia, survive in the wild. All of these Persian cheetahs live within the borders of Iran. (The Persian cheetah -- Acinonyx jubatus venaticus, or “Asiatic cheetah” -- is a unique subspecies of the cheetah.) In India, the same species/subspecies of Persian cheetahs have been extinct for nearly 70 years.

But on 17 September 2022, the federal Indian government reintroduced and released 8 cheetahs to Kuno, within India. However, these cheetahs are an African subspecies, flown in from Namibia. These African cheetahs are technically a non-native species.

Their release was also deliberately scheduled to coincide with the birthday of notorious ethnonationalist prime minister Narendra Modi, in what critics and many ecologists consider a nationalist publicity stunt or “vanity project”.

Hundreds of villagers have been relocated by the state/federal government to accommodate the project, and some of them, recognized by the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) program, say they have not received compensation.

Meanwhile, many ecologists also have doubts about the long-term viability of the cheetah reintroduction, which took place in a landscape that was originally studied for the purposes of accommodating the reintroduction of a different nearly-extinct big cat, the Asiatic lion.

Here’s some quick context about the rarity of the native Persian/Asiatic cheetah:

And here’s a round-up of headlines about India’s project.

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Lou Del Bello. “Cheetahs are back in India but conservationists have doubts over plan.” New Scientist. 21 September 2022.

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Iram Siddique. “Cheetah reintroduction project: Ready for relocation, Bagcha villagers put up fight for rights.” The Indian Express. 17 September 2022. 

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Aathira Pernichery. “Project Cheetah Begins to the Trumpets of Hope, and Wariness.” The Wire. 17 September 2022.

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Sonakshi Srivastava. “India’s Cheetah Reintroduction Plan is Fraught With Political Symbolism, Short on Scientific Rigor.” The Swaddle. 26 January 2021.

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Manoj Misra. “The Other Problems With Bringing African Cheetahs to India.” The Wire. 23 September 2022.

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Anyway, here’s a native Persian/Asiatic cheetah:

Here, British military officers helped to materialize imaginatively and empirically the Mediterranean as a transitional zone for the physical and cultural acclimatization of British officers en route to and from India and to make visible the connectivity of North Africa to Europe through the geographical distribution of birds. [...] [T]he mapping of the world’s zoogeographical regions and their boundary lines was [...] intertwined in global networks of empire, military, and science [...]. In the nineteenth century, the study of biogeography focused on the impact of climate and the distribution of organisms across the globe, helping to establish imperial taxonomies, racial hierarchies, and boundary lines for territorial conquest and human exploitation such as slavery, natural resource extraction, and colonization [...].

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In 1858, British lawyer and zoologist Dr. Philip L. Sclater (1829–1913) figured verbally and diagrammatically the six zoogeographic regions -- Palaearctic, Ethiopian, Indian, Australasian, Nearctic, Neotropical -- using the distribution of birds to determine “the most natural division of the earth’s surface into primary kingdoms or provinces” [...]. According to Sclater and Agassiz, these distributions were based on God’s will [...]. Sclater, through his involvement with many leading scientific societies such as the Zoological Society of London, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and the British Ornithological Union (BOU) and as founder and editor of the BOU’s The Ibis (established in 1859), emerged as a “centre of calculation” [...] for a network of colonial officials, travelers, and British military officers [...]. 

From the 1860s through the 1880s, The Ibis focused primarily on ornithological writings of the “Mediterranean lands” [...] and showcased an ancient Egyptian bird on the River Nile among the pyramids, reflecting British geopolitical interests in the region in relation to the French [...]. [T]he British Museum served as a “nerve center of all possible knowledge” (11) under the supervision of the state much like Kew Gardens and botanical knowledge [...]. Britain’s imperial presence in the Mediterranean was contingent on other competing empires (i.e., French, Spanish, Ottoman, Italian, Russian, German), however, in its attempt to maintain control in the region and to bring North Africa into its “informal empire” [...].

[I]t was at the military stations of Gibraltar (1704–present) and Malta (1800–1964) that most of the ornithological observations and collections occurred prior to the occupation of Egypt in 1882 [...]. Like the “imperial archive,” the “avian imperial archive” (Greer 2012) served as an ideological force in imagining control over universal knowledge and thus Britain’s “natural” territories. [...]

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The military surveillance of colonial and avian landscapes at Gibraltar and Malta created a network of “panoptic power” (Hannah 2000, 128) that helped British naturalists such as Sclater and Wallace to map empirically the “natural” boundary line between Europe and Africa in the Mediterranean. It was at Gibraltar where “modern” ideas about bird migration emerged from the collections made at the military garrison starting in the eighteenth century [...]. British military officials allied specimens to travel narratives in justifying knowledge claims [...]. [S]pecimens with narratives helped to mark regions “within an encompassing story of imperial destiny and masculine daring,” often erasing local knowledges [...].

[M]ilitary field ornithology helped to conceptualize empirically and imaginatively a Mediterranean semitropical subregion [...]. In this sense, the art of government or governmentality helped to create order through the management of people (British soldiers) and the arrangement of “things” (birds) for the benefit of the state. Birds, therefore, entered into geopolitical calculation through practices of imperial region making such as bird lists, specimens, and narratives. The emphasis on “locality” required the production of “on-the-spot” field knowledge and the material study of skins that were intimately tied to fixing mobile avian bodies in time and place. Such zoogeographical mappings involved an imperial imagination of the Mediterranean as an intermediary region or “half-way house” [...].

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An apparent most-likely origin of the domesticated apple, the “apple forests” of the Tian Shan foothills (where this fruit is joined by wild plum, apricot, hawthorn, and pears) was probably also a stronghold of the now-extinct Caspian tiger (a unique subspecies, Panthera tigris virigata). Central Asia is well known for its vast grassland steppes where horses were domesticated; its multiple extensive arid deserts (the Kyzylkum and Karakum); and its dramatic towering mountains (to the east, the Pamirs and Tian Shan). But there’s a little nook, up against the Tian Shan near Almaty, where a sort of peripheral forest holds many fruit. The largest city in Kazakhstan is Almaty, with about two million people in the urban agglomeration area. The city historically was variously addressed as Almatau (possible approximation: Apple Mountain), Alma-Ata (possible approximation: Father of Apples), and a place “where the apples are” (though there’s disagreement about the etymology either referring to Kazakh-language “apple” or Tukic-language[s] “father.”)

[Caption from B*C, November 2018: “The foothills of the Tian Shan mountains in Kazakhstan were once blanketed with Malus sieversii trees.”]

Malus sieversii comes from this region, a wild apple thought to be a likely predecessor of the domesticated apple. Meltwater from snowpack and alpine ice in the Tian Shan region channels into rivers like Amu Darya and Syr Darya, waterways which then flow through the extensive deserts towards the Aral Sea. Along the rivers: history and wonderful artistic traditions of Khwarazm and Bukhara. These riparian corridors of woodland provide a kind of oasis amdist Central Asia’s desert, where the Caspian tiger lived, creating habitat corridors across the desert between the forest of Tien Shan and the forests of the Caucasus and Caspian littoral.

The Caspian tiger was very large and apparently most closely related to the surviving Siberian tiger subspecies. Caspian tigers lived in the Hyrcanian forests along the Caspian Sea’s shore in Persia, and even lived in Anatolia, the Caucasus, and Kurdish regions of Iraq until the mid-20th-century. Put another way: wild tigers near the shores of the Black Sea on the edge of “Europe” only a century ago.

Location of the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivercourses and the corridors of riparian habitat which they provide across the deserts:

As “modernization” and industrialized agriculture were introduced in Central Asia in the 20th century, water was diverted, and desertification took place. The Amu Darya and Syr Darya both used to drain into the Aral Sea.

Anyway, some stuff on the proposed movement of apples:

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Yea. Cheetahs, tigers, lions, and leopards were all living on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean within the political borders of modern-day Turkey and in the region around Gobekli Tepe, not just 12,000-ish years ago during the first architecture construction at the site, but also within the past 100 years. All of these cats coexisted in Mesopotamia, Persia, and Anatolia for essentially, all of human history. Both tigers and lions still lived in “Europe” on the northern shores of the Black Sea (in modern-day Ukraine) and in the Caucasus during the Middle Ages, with tigers still appearing near Crimea in the 1700s. Lions still lived in Mesopotamia around 1920, cheetahs still lived in Palestine around 1945, and tigers still lived in Turkey in the 1970s. In Kurdish lands, near the eastern political borders of Turkey, all 4 big cats lived nearly alongside each other until the 20th century.

And yea, that wasn’t a great map of historic cheetah range (I’m really disappointed with bad/vague distribution maps), but there are other maps of historical big cat distribution that I could recommend.

From Gobekli Tepe:

Kinda looks like a big cat?

Cheetahs were apparently still living in the eastern Mediterranean, in the Sinai of Palestine, until at least 1945. They were still present in Mesopotamia until at least 1925, when the cats were reported south of Baghdad. They may have gone extinct within Turkish political borders in the 1800s, but this would’ve been difficult to confirm because of eastern Turkey’s mountainous terrain. (Cheetahs also survived in Afghanistan, Yemen, Oman into the 1970s.) Cheetahs in Anatolia ostensibly would’ve been the Asiatic subspecies, Acinonyx jubatus venaticus, which is the same subspecies currently living in Iran.

Tigers still lived in Kurdish lands and within Turkey’s borders into the 1970s. The Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata). Tigers were living in Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia until the 1940s, apparently. They were also reported living near Crimea, Sochi, and the shores of the Black Sea during the 1700s. This subspecies, the Caspian tiger, seemed to utilize the wooded vegetation of the riparian corridors along the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, which provided suitable habitat and cover for the tigers to disperse across the great deserts of Central Asia between Lake Balkash and the Caspian. Relative to those deserts, the slopes of the Caucasus and the lush forests of Iranian shores of the Caspian (not too different from temperate rainforest) are much more vegetated. (There were 9 tiger subspecies living during recent centuries. Five are alive in the wild: Malayan, Bengal, Sumatran, Indochinese, and Siberian. One might be extinct in the wild: South China. Three are extinct: Bali, Javan, and Caspian.)

Leopards apparently still survive within Turkey’s borders, in Kurdistan. The subspecies is Panthera pardus saxicolor, the leopard of Anatolia, the Caucasus, and Persia. The same subspecies still lives nearby in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, northern Iraq, and Persia.

Another leopard subspecies, Panthera pardus nimur, still lives in the Arabian peninsula and was historically present in Palestine, the Sinai, and the eastern Mediterranean shore close to Anatolia.

Lions apparently went extinct within Turkish borders in the late 1800s, but they were still recorded in nearby Mesopotamia until the First World War, when a lion was famously killed in Iraq in 1918. Lions were present in Persia until at least 1944, when a dead lion was found in Iranian Khuzestan. Lions were also present in Thessalonika and the Greek shores of the Aegean until at least 300 AD. (According to records from that time, an also according to archaeological dating of lion remains.) It’s likely that lions lived in Iberia (and Italy?) until 1500 BC or so. (Then again, maybe not surprising, since the cat is adaptable enough that lions also lived alongside humans in North America only a few thousand years ago, too. The lions in North America were even, possibly, the same species as the modern extant lion, Panthera leo atrox. But sometimes the American lion is designated as its own species, Panthera atrox.)

Persian cheetah:

Caspian tiger:

Persian and Arabian leopard:

Distribution of Persian leopard subspecies:

Distribution of Arabian leopard subspecies:

Asiatic lion:

“Modern” lion (Panthera leo) during recent millennia in Holocene:

Lion during Pleistocene:

Even caracals mingled with the other cats in Anatolia:

The ancient Near East was a meeting place, and very biodiverse.

The “Fertile Crescent” really was fertile. Even Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) appear to have been present in Mesopotamia and near Kurdistan in ancient times during the ascent of Assyria.

(Isn’t it thought-provoking how woolly mammoths still survived on Wrangell Island 9000 years after the first construction at Gobekli Tepe; mammoths still alive 1000 years after the construction of the great pyramids of Egypt?)

the lizard was recorded in early june 2020 in the Fraser Delta of the coastal PNW from Surrey, in the urbanized metro area of Vancouver, within the arbitrary political borders of so-called BC/Canada. (the closest known population of fence lizards is within US borders, only 30 kilometers away near Bellingham in Washington State). photo documentation was included and the announcement was made by the Royal BC Museum’s Natural History blog. this might make some kind of sense, because the Northwestern fence lizard has one of the most interesting (to me, at least) geographic distribution range patterns for a reptile/amphibian in the PNW. most of the coastal PNW is shrouded in temperate rainforest (too wet and cool and shaded for most reptiles), but the populations of Northwestern fence lizard in the coastal PNW are isolated and unique. they live in driftwood habitat on the beaches of the Salish Sea. (more on the beach lizards.)

but wait: is this Northwestern fence lizard actually “naturally-occurring” in the Fraser Delta?

a Northwestern fence lizard from beach habitat from the Salish Sea within Washington State:

a Northwestern fence lizard from Kittias County, Washington:

location of the “new” lizard:

known native distribution of the Northwestern fence lizard (sorry for bad quality of the map):

2 other native lizards are known to live within BC borders: Skilton’s skink and the Northwestern alligator lizard. (1 other species of lizard might be extinct: the pygmy short-horned lizard, a species basically endemic to the inland Pacific Northwest, was historically reported from the Okanogan Valley.) and coastal British Columbia is also home to a dangerous non-native introduced lizard: the European wall lizard of the Victoria area.

Canadian ecologists have long proposed that the fence lizard miiight be present within BC borders because of the proximity of two separate populations of the lizard nearby in Washington state: (1) the Puget Sound/Salish Sea, near Bellingham/Mt. Vernon, and (2) in the East Cascades slopes at the Methow Valley south of the Okanogan.

the Northwestern fence lizard a species of “Californian ecology,” from the oak and woodlands of northern California, Klamath Mountains valleys, and Willamette Valley. but it also has isolated populations existing on the beaches of the Salish Sea, where it lives in driftwood piles. the coastal Pacific Northwest is very wet, covered in rainforest: not very nice for reptiles that like “dry” environments. but the fence lizard has native “naturally-occurring” populations on these beaches, probably because the rain shadow of the mountains of Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula provides a very narrow corridor of “mild” and relatively “drier” Garry oak habitat along the Salish Sea, where cities like Seattle and Vancouver can experience relatively warmer and milder climates despite being located so close to high-elevation mountains and humid temperate rainforest.

the Northwestern fence lizard’s distribution is relatively similar to the sharp-tailed snake (Contia tenuis). another rare example of a reptile from the coastal PNW (photo via California Herps; map by me, sorry):

within Washington, a map template from Washington GAP:

compare to the distribution of Garry oak and oak savanna:

anyway, the Northwestern fence lizard has populations near Port Angeles, Port Townsend, and Seattle; one of these populations exists near Bellingham, not far from Surrey and the BC border. also, there is a separate population of Northwestern fence lizards living in a narrow corridor of habitat on the other side of the Cascades, on the eastern slopes of the Cascades in the Methow Valley; this population is also close

but hold up.

even though there is contiguous habitat of coastal lowlands shared between the Bellingham and Surrey lizards, meaning that naturally-occurring fence lizards could be in the Vancouver metro area, gotta be hesitant about the Surrey lizard being “native.”

1 - so much of the Fraser Delta has been heavily altered and urbanized, so that almost none of the habitat is intact. other native coastal lowland species which were originally present in the Fraser Delta have gone extinct in the past century, including the Pacific gophersnake (which was historically detected near Bellingham and also on the Gulf Islands east of Victoria, but which no longer survives within Canada) another reptile species with a similar distribution pattern to the fence lizard.

2 - it’s very possible that this fence lizard was a transplant; a “pet” picked up in Washington State and then released.

3 - also, even if this lizard from Surrey represents a “natural” dispersal from the population of lizards living near Bellingham in Washington State, have to point out that the population in Mt. Vernon was itself introduced by some meddling scientist in the late 1980s and early 1990s, “just to see what would happen.”

so hmmm?

Northwestern fence lizard habitat on the shores of the Salish Sea (Maury Island, Washington):

maybe worth pointing out that these coastal lowland habitats on eastern Vancouver Island and the Fraser Delta are under threat from another lizard, the non-native introduced European wall lizard:

from

ostriches, too, i guess: