Striped Hyaenas are believed to have been widely distributed in former times, but there are no specimens and reports are extremely sparse. It was reported present on Jebel Hafeet by Thesiger (1949); on the Al Ain-Dubai road, in Bani Yas and Liwa in the 1980s (Duckworth 1996); one was seen crossing a track between Awhala and Khor Kalba (Gross 1987); there was a report from villagers in Wadi Helo, near Kalba, in June 1996, and there is a probable sighting between Al Ain and Sweihan in December 1996 (Hellyer 1997). Spoor thought to be that of Hyaena was seen near the Shah oil field, south of Liwa in 1999 (Aspinall et al. 2005, Drew and Tourenq 2005). Residents of the higher part of Musandam said that hyenas used to occur there (Jongbloed et al. 2001). There have been no confirmed recent records and the species is no longer considered to occur in UAE. The international borders between Saudi Arabia, Oman and UAE are fenced, except for some of the highest mountain areas, preventing or hindering movement, so natural recolonization of the UAE by the species is highly unlikely. The Striped Hyaena has a very large, albeit now patchy global distribution, extending across North, Northeast and East Africa, south to about central Tanzania, and through the Arabian Peninsula, Turkey, the Caucasus, Iran, Central Asia, and northern Indian subcontinent (AbiSaid and Dloniak 2015). It has become rare in most parts of the Arabian Peninsula, mainly because of ongoing persecution (Mallon and Budd 2011).