It lives primarily in the large stretches of uninterrupted rocky desert, but because agriculture takes up so much room it can also be found occasionally in the agricultural regions surrounding the deserts. Many of the deserts are designated as national parks.
These leopards are mostly nocturnal (awake and active at night, resting during the day), which explains why I haven't seen one during my hikes! They eat small to medium sized mammals that live in the same habitat, like the ibex and the hyrax I've seen during my time out in the desert. They also hunt gazelles and hares and even some birds. Because so much of its natural environment has been divided by humans, sometimes leopards hunt domesticated sheep and goats that belong to farmers in the region.
Unfortunately, because of how densely humans are settled in the areas directly surrounding the habitat of the Arabian leopard, their populations are often isolated from one another. This means that they cannot breed readily and because of that, there are estimated to be about only 200 wild leopards in the entire Arabian Peninsula. They are considered "critically endangered" because their population numbers are so low.
It's sometimes difficult to think of such a large and powerful cat being endangered by humans, but when they can't find the food they need and the areas they need to breed, their numbers dwindle. To try to re-introduce populations into the wild, there are breeding programs within zoos. Hopefully these will be successful so that the leopards can continue to rule the desert.
