Taxon distribution as listed in assessment
There are a few confirmed records and some additional anecdotal reports of this species in the UAE. Carcasses were obtained from south of Wutayd in 1987 and Ghayathi in western Abu Dhabi Emirate (Cunningham 2002). A dead but largely intact specimen was photographed and collected near a Little Owl perch on a calcrete terrace in the western desert of Abu Dhabi, 3 km W of the track to Mukhayriz prison, in April 1997 (G. Feulner, pers. comm. 2018). The specimen was deposited with M. Jongbloed, then Director of Sharjah Desert Park, but was subsequently misplaced. The first live sighting was in 2001 about 35 km northwest of Al Ain, when an animal was found near a den with tracks and prey remains (Cunningham 2002). One individual was found for sale in a pet shop in 2002, having been caught south of Al Ain; one was seen in the Sweihan area in autumn 2004 and more recently in 2017, and a further individual was observed in the Baynoonah area of western Abu Dhabi in 2005 (Drew and Tourenq 2005). Between 1995 and 2005 there were only four confirmed records despite intensive surveys in areas of suitable habitat (Drew and Tourenq 2005). All records and reports to date were summarised in Banfield et al. (2014). Presence in Baynoonah was confirmed in 2015 when 46 photographs of Sand Cat were obtained during a camera trap survey (Ahmed et al. 2016), and surveys in protected areas of Abu Dhabi in 2017-2018 have recorded Sand Cat at 12 new localities, in addition to Baynoonah. These new records may indicate that the species is more widely distributed than previously suspected. There are no recent records from the Dubai or Sharjah deserts. It is assumed that formerly it was sparsely and patchily distributed across the UAE, except for the mountains. Globally, the Sand Cat has an extensive but very patchy distribution in North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Iran, Pakistan and Central Asia (Sliwa et al. 2016). In the Arabian Peninsula records are widely but sparsely distributed in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia north to Iraq, Jordan and Syria (Banfield et al. 2014).
History
The information collected since 1996 indicates a population (<) 250 mature individuals and it appears to have undergone some declines, probably due to loss of habitat in parts of its range due to overgrazing and increasing infrastructure. There might also have been some persecution. Hornby (1996) assessed the species as Endangered, however, we consider that there would likely have been more than 250 mature individuals back then, so backcasted it to be Vulnerable (VU D).
