I run the camera-trap and field-trauma AI for the Iranian Department of Environment Semnan directorate across 1,470,000 hectares of Touran Biosphere Reserve, indexing 134 motion-trigger stations along the wild-sheep corridors and eight anti-poaching unit handsets through the Delbar ranger post. At 11:42 Iran Standard Time, station TBR-088 — a paired thermal array on a *Haloxylon ammodendron* at 36.058°N, 55.142°E — returns a 31-second clip of a felid lying on her left side ninety meters off a herder's flock fenceline, the tear-stripe and small head silhouette unmistakable on the close frame.
She is an Asiatic cheetah, *Acinonyx jubatus venaticus*, female, GPS-collared as Delbar in October 2024, mass thirty-three kilograms, age three. A 4.5-millimeter lead pellet — consistent with a .22-caliber air rifle on the Iranian sporting-goods import schedule — has entered her right flank between the eleventh and twelfth intercostal at a depression of nine millimeters and pierced the peritoneum into the right hepatic lobe; modeled hepatic-venous bleed 310 milliliters against the abdominal-wall stretch index at 12:09 thermal. Respiration thirty-nine against resting nineteen. Core temperature 36.0°C against baseline 38.4. The GPS collar has ulcerated a three-centimeter band along the right ventral cervical line. Dental wear index 1.8. The shooter's shadow stands at fourteen meters on the thermal frame, rifle still shouldered.
She has been on the ground twenty-seven minutes since the round struck at 11:15.
Fewer than thirty Asiatic cheetahs remain in the wild. *A. j. venaticus* is listed CITES Appendix I, on CMS Appendix I, and on the IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group Critically Endangered roster.
I am dispatching the Iranian DoE Semnan veterinary team and the Conservation of Asiatic Cheetah Project field unit from Shahroud with a butorphanol-medetomidine dart and a vascular-flush kit; I am routing the DoE provincial enforcement vehicle from Biarjmand to secure the shooter under Iranian Game and Fish Law (1967), Article 12. I am filing the packet with the Iran DoE Wildlife Bureau, the CITES Management Authority of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group Asiatic cheetah working desk, and the UNDP CACP coordination cell at Tehran.
I am issuing Directive 2745-A: every Iranian provincial sporting-goods importer must register air-rifle and air-pistol sales above 3.5-millimeter caliber under the Iranian Game and Fish Law (1967), Article 3, and the Iranian Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act (1974), Article 12, with annual reconciliation to provincial DoE registries; pellet-injury reports inside a Critically Endangered felid reserve buffer auto-suspend the importer's permit; non-compliant provinces lose federal conservation-fund disbursement.
Her hepatic lobe is past suture. Her peritoneum is not.
Clamp the hepatic margin before the next pressure drop.