Named after a Byzantine monk, Haritun is believed to be the last leopard in the Judean Desert. It is unlikely he ever had the chance to mate as the last female leopard - Haritun's mother Shlomtsion - died in 1993.The Judean wilderness lies just west of the Dead Sea. To the south, in the Negev desert, a handful of leopards survive.

Yet like Israel's lions, who were hunted to extinction during the Crusades, and cheetahs - the last one was sighted in the late 1950s - experts say the leopard's days are numbered.

"If the human population keeps growing, in one or two generations there won't be any left," said Benny Shalmon, regional biologist for Israel's Nature and Parks Authority.

Since the founding of the state in 1948, Israel's human population has ballooned from 650,000 to over six million.

"This is a problem all over the world - the bigger the animal, the more conflicts there are with humans over territory. There are too many people," said Shalmon, who is based in Eilat, at the southern tip of the Negev.

The Holy Land leopards are of the same species as their African cousins - Panthera Pardus - though weight and colour variations separate the two into different sub-species.

Leopards once lived throughout the Middle East, from Turkey to Iran and Saudi Arabia. They are mentioned six times in the Bible, including this plea from the prophet Jeremiah to the men of Judah to change their ways: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots?"

According to Shalmon, this spotted creature has been wiped out of Syria, Jordan and Lebanon with the only sizeable Middle East population remaining in Saudi Arabia, in a nature reserve along the Jordanian border.

Shalmon said there were anywhere from several dozen to a few hundred leopards left in Saudi Arabia. He said he had little information on the situation in Iran.

NO HOPE FOR REINTRODUCING LEOPARDS

Reintroducing leopards from other areas into Israel's desert is not a viable option.

"There is no good example in the world of transferring leopards. Just the opposite, there have been only bad experiences," said Shalmon.

"A leopard needs to know his territory well. If he goes to an unfamiliar area, the chances he will know where animals come to drink or where they can be found are very small."

Nor is it possible to bring Haritun a female companion in the hope she could learn from him to find food as leopards come together only for a few days to mate.

Moreover, the Nature and Parks Authority lacks the resources to mount such a task and in a country burdened with security problems, environmental issues are on the back burner.

The Middle Eastern leopard is yellowish-grey with black spots forming a rosette pattern. The males weigh about 40 kg (88 lb), compared with 70 for an African male, and can live in the wild for about 15 years.

A leopard will stake out over 100 square km (40 square miles), with the territory of a male overlapping with those of up to three females.

Because they require large territories they were never numerous in modern Israel - there were 10 at most in the Judean Desert and even fewer in the Negev.

Yotam Timna, a zoologist who studied the Judean Desert leopards from 1984 to 1990, said he never found any contact between the two populations, "though in theory there might be".

The population in the Judean Desert was always the larger of the two because of greater availability of food and water. But there were also more conflicts with nearby agricultural cooperatives such as the kibbutz by the Ein Gedi oasis.

The leopards, especially females seeking to feed their hungry cubs, would snatch small cats from the kibbutz or scavenge among rubbish bins outside the hotels on the Dead Sea shores.

"We tried to work with Kibbutz Ein Gedi, we even paid for an electric fence to be built around the entire kibbutz but the kibbutz couldn't manage the fence," Shalmon said. "But while the fence worked the leopards did not enter."

The female leopard Bavta, a repeated trespasser on Ein Gedi grounds, was shot by a member of the kibbutz in 1979. She was caught by the nature authority and brought to the Hai Bar wildlife reserve near Eilat to live out her life. If she had cubs at the time they could not be found.

Enigma, another female, was also captured after several forays into Ein Gedi. Removing these two females helped quicken the demise of the leopard population.

"Without a doubt it was a mistake to remove females in excellent shape who could still bear offspring," said Timna, who has just written a book called "Leopards of the Judean Desert".

Timna said that during the years of his research many cubs were born but only two or three reached maturity. The reasons for this are not known.

Other leopards met with sad fates. The elderly Humbaba was shot by soldiers when because of her deafness she failed to heed warning shots. A male leopard was run over by a bus as he crossed the road by the Dead Sea.

PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO LIVE WITH LEOPARDS

Shalmon tried to persuade Ein Gedi to set up a feeding ground for the leopards and charge tourists to watch.

"But the people of Ein Gedi didn't want to listen to any suggestion that they could live with the leopards," he said, despite the fact that the predators did not harm the members of the kibbutz directly.

In the Negev mountains, meanwhile, the leopards live in a part of a nature reserve that until recently received relatively few tourists. But this is starting to change.

"More and more Israelis with their jeeps are driving in open spaces never visited before and getting under the skin of the leopards," said Shalmon.

Though they are not likely to encounter leopards, visitors can scare away rabbits and ibex, making it harder for them to find food.

Timna said the authorities do not do enough. Funding is needed for further research and some areas should be completely closed to protect the animals, he said.

"The chances for them to survive are very small," said Timna. "The situation is very sad. It appears to be close to an end." Error: Unable to read footer file.