Prediction of Wild Sheep habitat ‎desirability, the main prey of ‎Asiatic Cheetah on the Central ‎Iranian plateau, to improve ‎species management

Wild Sheep is one of the ungulate, which lives in mountainous and hilly areas. This species is one of the main preys of cheetah in the Central Plateau of Iran, after a sharp decline in Gazelle and Jebeer population in Iran. Hence, in this study, the identification of the suitable habitats for Wild sheep in the central Iranian plateau was studied as the selected areas for the conservation of Asiatic cheetah. The species desirability habitat modeling was performed by using nine models in the Biomod2 package. The results showed that in all models, distance from water resources, distance from village, mines, fields, and slopes were the most important variables and country that elevation and road as the least important variables. Half of the species desirable area located outside of the protected areas boundaries. Due to high overlap of Wild Sheep presence and Asiatic Cheetah presence in the central of the country, its habitat management has a direct positive effect on the cheetah conservation.