Iranian and Western wildlife experts are working together to save rare cheetahs from extinction in this arid, mountainous region, despite a nuclear row between their governments.

US- and British-based conservation groups are backing a campaign spearheaded by Iran's Department of Environment (DoE) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to prevent the endangered Asiatic cheetah from dying out.

Iran is believed to host the only 60 - 100 Asiatic cheetahs left in the wild. Some eke out a living in a forbidding terrain of jagged peaks, deep gorges and bone-dry plains in the Kuh-e Bafgh protected area in Yazd province in central Iran.