SIS helps to save Arabian leopard

Children and adults on their walk for the Arabian leopard.

The 1st annual Sana’a International School Walk to Save the Arabian leopard took place on Sunday at the SIS campus near Shamlan. 

More than 200 students and adults from SIS covered a total of 2450 kilometers on foot. Every walker had sponsors that will pay him or her for each kilometer walked. At the end of the walk, this money will be collected to support and help the Arabian leopard reproduce in Sana’a and Taiz zoos. “Students have not finished collecting the money they raised, but we expect individuals to have raised as much as $4,000 for conservation,” said David Stanton, a teacher at the SIS.   

Students at SIS have walked in the World Wildlife Fund Walk for Wildlife every year for the past ten years.  The WWF is no longer sponsoring a walk, so the school is continuing the tradition with the focus of fundraising efforts being something with local relevance—the Arabian leopard.  

This animal is almost extinct in the wild, with one or two small populations still perservering in the Wada’a area of Sa’ada and perhaps the Hawf Protected Area on the border with Oman.  “From a population of thousands of leopards in the past we now have a population of about ten or less in Yemen,” said Stanton. “If people don’t act quickly to save the Arabian leopard it will certainly become extinct like the dodo, passenger pigeon and many thousands of other species.” 

“I will walk as far as I can to collect money and help save the Arabian leopard’s life because it is becoming an extinct and endangered animal,” said Ahmed al-Akwa’a, 8. 

The Arabian leopard is the second most endangered large cat in the world, with fewer than 100 of these magnificent animals in existence. Nine of these beautiful creatures are held in the Sana’a and Taiz zoos where they are underfed, overcrowded, and receive inadequate veterinary care, according to the Arabian Leopard Club of the Sana’a International School. 

They breed, but the offspring invariably die making these nine animals useless to the continuation of their species. The long-term goal is to ensure the survival of Arabian leopards in the wild. The immediate aims are to improve the conditions in which the nine captive leopards in Yemen are kept, and to initiate a publicity campaign to gain support for leopards and their desperate situation.

The advantage of the initiative by SIS is that it is entirely voluntary, so that 100 percent of the money raised will go towards meeting the goals. 

The Arabian leopard (Panthera pardus) is a smaller subspecies of leopard than that of its cousins in Asia and Africa. This subspecies is critically endangered and their populations are still declining. Historically they have been persecuted and killed for pest control, as well as hunted and it is still going on today. 

A spate of killings by hunters in the early 1990’s triggered a conservation effort, spearheaded by the Arabian Leopard Trust, which aims at preserving the mountain habitat and all its wildlife. On the Arabian Peninsula the population is only around 100 leopards, and no subpopulation is greater than 50 individuals. 

In Israel, there is between 15-18 leopards in all the Negev and the Arava. The Arabian leopard lives in Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Yemen, and Oman.

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