Persian Fallow Deer
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The Persian fallow deer (''Dama mesopotamica'') is a
deer A deer (: deer) or true deer is a hoofed ruminant ungulate of the family Cervidae (informally the deer family). Cervidae is divided into subfamilies Cervinae (which includes, among others, muntjac, elk (wapiti), red deer, and fallow deer) ...
species once native to all of the
Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...
, but currently only living in
Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...
and
Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
. It was reintroduced in Israel. It has been listed as
endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, inv ...
on the
IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is an inventory of the global conservation status and extinction risk of biological ...
since 2008. After a
captive breeding Captive breeding, also known as captive propagation, is the process of keeping plants or animals in controlled environments, such as wildlife reserves, zoos, Botanical garden, botanic gardens, and other Conservation biology, conservation facilitie ...
program, the population has rebounded from only a handful of deer in the 1960s to over a thousand individuals.


Taxonomy

''Cervus (Dama) mesopotamicus'' was described by Victor Brooke in 1875 for a deer that was shot at the Karun river in Iran. Its taxonomic status is disputed. It has traditionally been considered to be a
subspecies In Taxonomy (biology), biological classification, subspecies (: subspecies) is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (Morphology (biology), morpholog ...
of the
fallow deer Fallow deer is the common name for species of deer in the genus ''Dama'' of subfamily Cervinae. There are two living species, the European fallow deer (''Dama dama''), native to Europe and Anatolia, and the Persian fallow deer (''Dama mesopotamic ...
from western Europe, ''Dama dama'' (as ''Dama dama mesopotamica''), but is also treated as a distinct
species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...
by some authors.


Description

Persian fallow deer have an average body mass of around , considerably larger than European fallow deer. They reach a shoulder height of around and a length of . Their palmate (flattened) antlers are somewhat less broad than those of European fallow deer. Other differences include the colour of the tail and having a wider upper end of the nasal bones than European fallow deer.Khademi TG
A review of the biological status of persian fallow deer (Dama mesopotamica), a precious and endangered animal species in Iran.
J Middle East Appl Sci Technol (JMEAST), 2014(18): p. 638–42.


Distribution and habitat

The Persian fallow deer prefers woodlands of
tamarisk The genus ''Tamarix'' (tamarisk, salt cedar, taray) is composed of about 50–60 species of flowering plants in the family Tamaricaceae, native to drier areas of Eurasia and Africa. The generic name originated in Latin and may refer to the Tamb ...
,
oak An oak is a hardwood tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' of the beech family. They have spirally arranged leaves, often with lobed edges, and a nut called an acorn, borne within a cup. The genus is widely distributed in the Northern Hemisp ...
and
pistachio The pistachio (, ; ''Pistacia vera'') is a small to medium-sized tree of the Anacardiaceae, cashew family, originating in Iran. The tree produces nut (fruit)#Culinary definition and uses, seeds that are widely consumed as food. In 2022, world ...
. It avoids roads, even when traffic is low, which limits its spread and movement.


Historic

Before the Neolithic era, as humans first began to colonise Europe, Persian fallow deer were found in Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Anatolia. The Anatolian population appear to have co-existed with the normal fallow deer, which still survives there today. They interbred with it freely to form intermediate populations. There is a suggestion that they may have been imported into Egypt as a menagerie animal during the time of the pharaohs. Some writers believe that the deer might have occurred throughout the
Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...
in the 16th or 17th century. The range of the deer has fluctuated between the millennia. During the
Natufian The Natufian culture ( ) is an archaeological culture of the late Epipalaeolithic Near East in West Asia from 15–11,500 Before Present. The culture was unusual in that it supported a sedentism, sedentary or semi-sedentary population even befor ...
period of Israel, some 15,000 to 9,500 years ago, studies in zooarcheology have shown the fallow deer became extinct in southern Israel, while gazelle and especially roe deer proliferated. This is thought to be due to
climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...
in combination with changing land use patterns and hunting pressure. At the same time the taxon persisted in the north in the
Galilee Galilee (; ; ; ) is a region located in northern Israel and southern Lebanon consisting of two parts: the Upper Galilee (, ; , ) and the Lower Galilee (, ; , ). ''Galilee'' encompasses the area north of the Mount Carmel-Mount Gilboa ridge and ...
region. During the
early Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progr ...
, fallow deer were an important species sacrificed at the altar on
Mount Ebal Mount Ebal (; ) is one of the two mountains near the city of Nablus in the West Bank (Bible, biblical ''Shechem''), and forms the northern side of the valley in which Nablus is situated, the southern side being formed by Mount Gerizim. The mount ...
near the northern
West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...
city of
Nablus Nablus ( ; , ) is a State of Palestine, Palestinian city in the West Bank, located approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 156,906. Located between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a ...
, comprising 10% of the faunal assemblage (many species were sacrificed).
Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...
fallow deer of the region were larger, extant populations have evolved into smaller animals. They were introduced to
Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...
by humans some 10,000 years ago, in the pre-pottery
Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...
( Cypro-PPNB), and expanded rapidly as the indigenous megafauna of the island became extinct, such as the
endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...
dwarf elephant Dwarf elephants are prehistoric members of the order Proboscidea which, through the process of allopatric speciation on islands, evolved much smaller body sizes (around shoulder height) in comparison with their immediate ancestors. Dwarf elephant ...
and dwarf hippo species. Despite having cows, sheep, goats, pigs, dogs and cats, it is thought the prehistoric Cypriots managed the deer herds in some way for the next millennia, or may even have domesticated the animal. For six thousand years the deer were one of the main sources of meat for the islands, in marked contrast to the rest of the world; from 7,000 to 4,500 years ago the deer appear to have become possibly the most important economic mainstay of the island, with deer bones amounting to 70% of the animal remains at some sites. They occurred in significant numbers at the aceramic Neolithic sites of throughout Cyprus, such as Khirokitia, Kalavasos-Tenta, Cap Andreas Kastros, and Ais Yiorkis, and were important through the Cypriot Bronze Age. The deer were finally extirpated from the island in the 15th century. In the
Book of Deuteronomy Deuteronomy (; ) is the fifth book of the Torah (in Judaism), where it is called () which makes it the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament. Chapters 1–30 of the book consist of three sermons or speeches delivered to ...
14:5, the ''yaḥmur'' () is listed as the third species of animal that may be eaten. This word has usually been translated as "roe", but in the
King James Version The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), is an Early Modern English Bible translations, Early Modern English translation of the Christianity, Christian Bible for the Church of England, wh ...
it was translated as "fallow deer", and many more species have been named.


Modern

Currently, the Persian fallow deer occurs only in Iran and Israel. In 1978, Israeli conservationists carried some of the captive fallow deer out of Iran and to Israel for safekeeping in Carmel Hai-Bar Nature Reserve and Jerusalem Biblical Zoo. Since 1996, some have been gradually and successfully reintroduced into the wild, and as of 2020 live in the western
Galilee Galilee (; ; ; ) is a region located in northern Israel and southern Lebanon consisting of two parts: the Upper Galilee (, ; , ) and the Lower Galilee (, ; , ). ''Galilee'' encompasses the area north of the Mount Carmel-Mount Gilboa ridge and ...
,
Mount Carmel Mount Carmel (; ), also known in Arabic as Mount Mar Elias (; ), is a coastal mountain range in northern Israel stretching from the Mediterranean Sea towards the southeast. The range is a UNESCO biosphere reserve. A number of towns are situat ...
areas, Mount Sasa and the
Judean Hills The Judaean Mountains, or Judaean Hills (, or ,) are a mountain range in the West Bank and Israel where Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron and several other biblical sites are located. The mountains reach a height of . The Judean Mountains can be div ...
. By 1998, the population of Persian fallow deer had become well established in Israel and was gradually growing in number in a number of protected parks and zoos.


Behaviour and ecology

The Persian fallow deer is a grazing herbivore, with grass comprising 60% of its diet along with leaves and nuts. Persian fallow deer home range sizes vary based on gender and age. Older male deer are more territorial than younger males; however, older females stay closer to the site within an average of where they were reintroduced, while younger females migrate an average of away from release site. Pregnancy lasts around 230 days, with females continuing to breed until around 15 years of age. The maximum lifespan is around 20 years. It lives at least until eleven years old in the wild. A natural predator of the deer is the
grey wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the grey wolf or gray wolf, is a canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, including the dog and dingo, though gr ...
. Spotted hyenas also heavily preyed upon Persian fallow deer during the
Late Pleistocene The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as the Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division ...
, before their disappearance from the Middle East.


Threats

It is thought that the main reason for the decline of Persian fallow deer has been human hunting, beginning since the early Neolithic era.
Interspecific competition Interspecific competition, in ecology, is a form of competition in which individuals of ''different'' species compete for the same resources in an ecosystem (e.g. food or living space). This can be contrasted with mutualism, a type of symbiosis. ...
with domestic
livestock Livestock are the Domestication, domesticated animals that are raised in an Agriculture, agricultural setting to provide labour and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, Egg as food, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The t ...
, human encroachment and
habitat destruction Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss or habitat reduction) occurs when a natural habitat is no longer able to support its native species. The organisms once living there have either moved elsewhere, or are dead, leading to a decrease ...
for agriculture may also have contributed to their lowered numbers,Hildyard, A. (2001) ''Endangered Wildlife and Plants of the World.'' Marshall Cavendish Corporation, Tarrytown

/ref> as only around 10% of their former range still exists for habitation. Hunters are thought to have shot an animal in the 1990s, and Free-ranging dog, feral packs of dogs have been known to kill deer in Israel. The current (and historical) top cause of mortality, as with many deer species worldwide, is collisions with trains or cars—which is also a considerable danger to human drivers, with some people being killed in traffic accidents involving especially large deer. As the native wolf population of Israel has recovered and recolonised areas of the country from the Golan Heights, wolf predation of fallow deer has increased steadily since the late 2010s, something authorities have tried to curb somewhat. Historically, when their numbers were higher, Anatolian leopards and Syrian brown bears may have been predators of Persian fallow deer.


Conservation

Although 1,100 individuals as of 2015 means that the taxon no longer qualifies as '
endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, inv ...
', the IUCN argues that only wild and mature animals in Israel count (300), and subtracts 50 from this number because it claims they may not be viably mature, and thus is still able to claim less than 250 animals exist, which then makes the taxon eligible for criterion D of the IUCN conservation status standards for 'endangered'. This is the opposite of the situation a few years earlier, when the IUCN claimed that because there was a possibility that the Israeli population may have somehow become hybridised with European fallow deer, only the population in Iran should count as 'Persian fallow deer', and was thereby able to claim the species met the requirements for criterion D and could be called 'endangered'. Research in 2012 showed there was no signs of admixture or hybridization in any of the deer in Europe, Iran or Israel. Numbers are increasing rapidly in all populations.


In captivity

In 1875, when the species was first scientifically discovered, its range was restricted to southwestern and western Iran. A herd was kept in Britain in the 19th century. The taxon was thought to be extinct again by the 1940s, but was subsequently rediscovered in the
Khuzestan Province Khuzestan province () is one of the 31 Provinces of Iran. Located in the southwest of the country, the province borders Iraq and the Persian Gulf, covering an area of . Its capital is the city of Ahvaz. Since 2014, it has been part of Iran's R ...
in southwestern Iran in 1956. The Iranian Game and Fish Department quickly took actions to help conserve the Persian fallow deer by designating the Dez Wildlife Refuge and Karkeh Wildlife Refuge around the site of this animal's rediscovery, where indigenous populations are still conserved. In 1957–1958, a wild pair of pure-blood fawns was captured and brought to the Opel Zoo in Germany, where the wild female gave birth to its first pure-blood captive female in 1960; however, the male partner did not survive long enough to produce a second fawn. Without a male, a number of hybrids with the European fallow deer were born in Opel Zoo, all seven of these were sent to Dasht-e Naz back in Iran in 1973. From 1964 to 1967, the Iranian Game and Fish Department sent three expeditions to the Kareheh (old/new/different name for Karkeh?) area near the rediscovery site, during which three males and three females were captured, of which one male was sent to Germany, and the others used to initiate the Iranian breeding program at Dasht-e Naz Wildlife Refuge. The Iranian program was successful, and by the 1970s the taxon had been transferred to Ashk Island (in
Lake Urmia Lake Urmia is an endorheic salt lake in Iran. The lake is located between the provinces of East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan in Iran, and west of the southern portion of the Caspian Sea. At its greatest extent, it was the largest lake in th ...
), Arjan Protected Area (in the Zagros Mountains), Semeskandeh Wildlife Refuge and Kareheh Wildlife Refuge. By 1989 the deer were found in seven Iranian nature parks: Dez, Karcheh/Karkeh, Bachtaran, Ashk Island, Kabuldagh Island, Dasht-e Naz and Semeskandeh. The Semeskandeh population was derived from deer that Germany returned to Iran during the early 1970s. Iran immediately removed the hybrids from their breeding stock at Dasht-e Naz to Semeskandeh. In 1989 there were 169 to 194 known deer in Iran, with an unknown number in the wild in the original areas. The largest population, 50 to 70 animals, was at Dasht-e Naz. The smallest was at Kabuldagh Island, where six deer had been transferred in 1989. The population had increased to just under 250 by the 1990s. In 2003 there were 211 deer on Askh Island, 28 at Dasht-e Naz, and an unknown number at at least six other parks. By 2004, the total Iranian population had increased to approximately 340 individuals. As of 2013 the known Iranian population totalled 371 individuals across 14 sites, with 213 animals on Askh. The reintroduction of fallow deer to Israel was due to an initiative by the
Israel Nature and Parks Authority The Israel Nature and Parks Authority (, ; ) is an Israeli government organization that manages nature reserves and national parks in Israel, the Golan Heights and parts of the West Bank. The organization was founded in April 1998, merging two o ...
to restore biblically named mammals that had been lost. The initial breeding program with three pure-blood Persian fallow deer from the Opel Zoo in 1976, with an additional four deer translocated from Semeshkandeh reserve in Iran in a raid-like caper in 1978, which were taken to a breeding enclosure in the Carmel Hai-Bar Nature Reserve.Chapman, N. G. (2010
The possible role of enclosures in the conservation of threatened deer. Enclosures: A Dead-End?
28–37. Symposium proceedings, Sopron.
Saltz, D. (1996
Minimizing extinction probability due to demographic stochasticity in a reintroduced herd of Persian Fallow Deer ''Dama dama mesopotamica''
''Biological Conservation'', 75(1):27-33.
After a successful breeding program, many hundreds of deer have been derived from this original stock. It was later feared that the animals taken by Israel from Semeskandeh consisted of hybrids. Later genetic research showed that Iran had never mixed the stocks. Currently, several native and reintroduced populations are in numerous wildlife refuges in Iran and Israel. As a result of conservation efforts thus far, as of 2015, the current world population of the Persian fallow deer is estimated to be over 1,100 individuals, with just over half in Israel: there were 300 specimens living in the wild and 270 in captivity in Israel. Although the genetic diversity is low as the result of inbreeding, this does not appear to have caused any problems. There is also a population of hybrids with the nominate subspecies of fallow deer extant in Iran. As of 2020 Israel Nature and Parks Authority estimates that some 200 to 300 live in the wild in the northern Galilee area, between 90 and 100 in the Judean Hills and somewhat lower numbers on Mount Carmel. Releases of captive-bred animals is still ongoing and more are planned for 2021. The species is clearly spreading, with sighting, droppings and camera traps showing a steady increase in population and a spread in distribution to the east. The European zoo population clearly shows a lower allelic diversity than the Israeli population, and both these populations are less genomically diverse than the wild Iranian stock, which has about the same genetic diversity as the nominate ''Dama dama'' from Europe.
Genetic variation Genetic variation is the difference in DNA among individuals or the differences between populations among the same species. The multiple sources of genetic variation include mutation and genetic recombination. Mutations are the ultimate sources ...
is a concern in small populations because of an effect known as
inbreeding depression Inbreeding depression is the reduced biological fitness caused by loss of genetic diversity as a consequence of inbreeding, the breeding of individuals closely related genetically. This loss of genetic diversity results from small population siz ...
, where deleterious genetic diseases build up and the fecundity of the population drops. In Israel the population does not appear to suffer from any of these
small population size Small populations can behave differently from larger populations. They are often the result of population bottlenecks from larger populations, leading to loss of heterozygosity and reduced genetic diversity and loss or fixation of alleles and shif ...
effects. The captive population in Australia and New Zealand are hybrids created by importing sperm from Mesopotamian bucks and artificially inseminating normal fallow does. By repeatedly crossing the offspring with the original sperm, later generations have acquired an almost Mesopotamian genome and phenotype.


Reintroduction

In 1996, after breeding a stock 150 animals, Israel's Nature Reserves Authority began reintroducing the deer in the wild. A dozen deer were transferred every six months or so to an enclosed acclimatization area located in the reserve at
Nahal Kziv Nahal Kziv () (lit. "Kziv stream") or the Horn Valley () is a 39-kilometer long perennial stream in the Upper Galilee, Israel. During the winter, rainfall fills the channel, and springs along the riverbed add to the flow. Currently, Mekorot (the Is ...
in the Western
Galilee Galilee (; ; ; ) is a region located in northern Israel and southern Lebanon consisting of two parts: the Upper Galilee (, ; , ) and the Lower Galilee (, ; , ). ''Galilee'' encompasses the area north of the Mount Carmel-Mount Gilboa ridge and ...
. By early 2002, 120 deer had been reintroduced, and 40 new fawns had been born.Society for Protection of Nature in Israel
After 2002 the reintroductions dropped to about six animals a year,Bar-David, S., Saltz, D., and Dayan T. (2005
Predicting the Spatial Dynamics of a Reintroduced Population: The Persian Fallow Deer
''The Journal of Ecological Applications'', 15:1833-46.
a situation maintained as of 2020. The
maximum sustainable yield In population ecology and economics, maximum sustainable yield (MSY) is theoretically, the largest yield (or catch) that can be taken from a species' stock over an indefinite period. Fundamental to the notion of sustainable harvest, the concept o ...
, the greatest number of individuals that can be removed from the breeding pool to maximize the reintroduced population's size while allowing the breeding core to recover between each reintroduction event, was calculated by Saltz, and the projected population growth after reintroduction was modelled. The removal of 28% of female deer from the breeding pool in the first year of reintroduction and then the removal of about 12 females during each subsequent year was deemed sufficient by him, while maintaining a breeding pool size of 250 deer.Saltz, D. (1998) A long-term systematic approach to planning reintroductions: the Persian fallow deer and the Arabian oryx in Israel. ''Animal Conservation'', 1:245-252. Overall
recruitment Recruitment is #Process, the overall process of identifying, sourcing, screening, shortlisting, and interviewing candidates for Job (role), jobs (either permanent or temporary) within an organization. Recruitment also is the process involved in ...
after 3 years appears to be at least 30%.Dolev, A. D., Saltz, S., Bar-David, S., and Yom-Tov, Y. (2002) Impact of Repeated Releases on Space-use Patterns of Persian Fallow Deer. ''Journal of Wildlife Management'', 66(3):737-46. Recruitment in captive herd in Israel is some 78% over the period 1976 to 1996. Moreover, the survival of the reintroduced deer was high, having an 85% survival rate after reintroduction.


Survival

Persian fallow deer bred at the more busy Jerusalem Zoo were more likely to be killed, displayed less antipredator behaviour, and spent more time in the open: all twelve released animals from this facility were dead within 200 days. The deer from the breeding facility at Mount Carmel had much more success, with the majority surviving.Zidon, R., Saltz, D., Shore, L. S., and Motro, U. (2012
Behavioral Changes, Stress, and Survival Following Reintroduction of Persian Fallow Deer from Two Breeding Facilities
''The Journal of Conservation Biology'', 26(1):107-115.
Deer that are more daring generally disperse further. The first group of Persian fallow deer released into the wild displayed a slow, gradual movement away from the release site over relatively short distances and the establishment of regular movement patterns and a home range within 8 to 10 months. Subsequent releases indicated an establishment of a home range in less than one month. It was feared repeated releases from a single enclosure would impact the animals' natural ability to form a home range, but this proved unfounded, in fact the establishment of females released in later reintroduction events was potentially enhanced. Trends in survival rates of the reintroduced deer were compared to several different models predicting population survival patterns. The reintroduced population's survival best matched the model that assumed the chance of survival would only depend on an individual deer's time since release, which was statistically about three times more probable, on average, than the other models that were tested. Several possible causes exist for this reduction in survivorship soon after an individual is released into the wild, including the stress induced by releasing captive individuals into the wild and the reduced success of inexperienced mothers attempting to raise their first young in an unfamiliar habitat.


See also

* Arzhan National Park


References


External links


Persian fallow deer
at Animal Info {{Taxonbar, from=Q756889 Cervines Mammals of Asia Deer, Persian Fallow Deer, Persian Fallow Mammals described in 1875 Mount Ebal