Conservation of the Persian leopard, its prey and habitats requires the mobilization of global and national efforts. The Range-Wide Strategy for the Conservation of the Persian Leopard (pdf also in Projects of this website) was first discussed and endorsed at the First Range State Meeting for the Persian Leopard (20-22 Sep 2022, Tbilisi, Georgia) and then adopted at the COP14 (14th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Migratory Species CMS, 12-17 Feb 2024, Samarkand, Uzbekistan). It was organized within the CMS, specifically under the CMS Central Asian Mammals Initiative (CAMI). The knowledge base on the Persian leopard was published in 2022 in the Cat News Special Issue No. 15 (pdf also in Resources of this website) as an input to the development of the Range-Wide Strategy.

Implementation of the Range-Wide Strategy called for the formation of a professional, representative and motivated group of experts who would lead and coordinate the strategy implementation process on a technical level. This was an impetus to establish the PeLeWG in March 2023. It is an affiliated partner of the IUCN SSC Cat Specialist Group and has over 40 members. The group is managed by the Steering Committee of 15 members, including two Co-chairs, all from the range countries.