“There was a poster of a cheetah behind the counter,” he says. “It was a picture of a captive animal from Tehran Zoo that had become famous as part of a national education campaign. The shopkeeper knew all about it, and he was also aware that he lived in an area where Asiatic cheetahs were found, and he was proud of that,” said Luke Hunter of World Conservation Society, WCS, recalls buying supplies in a small-town general store on his first trip to Iran.

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