Jebel Samhan

Jebel Samhan Nature Reserve was established in 1997 in the governorate of Dhofar, in southern Oman, and protects some 4,500 km² at the eastern end of the mountain escarpment that overlooks the coastal plain.

Its climatic singularity is remarkable: between June and September the south-west monsoon, the khareef, wraps these mountains in a persistent mist that covers them in vegetation for a few weeks, a phenomenon found nowhere else on the Arabian peninsula and one that supports a flora with endemics and African affinities. For the rest of the year the landscape is arid and rocky, with cliffs more than a thousand metres high and deep gorges.

Its value for wildlife is of global reach: Jebel Samhan holds the most important known population of the Arabian leopard, the most threatened leopard subspecies on the planet, of which probably fewer than two hundred individuals remain across the whole peninsula. The camera-trap studies carried out here since the 1990s have provided most of what is known about the species. The reserve is also home to Nubian ibex, caracal, striped hyena and Arabian wolf, and the frankincense tree grows on its slopes, the traditional exploitation of which gave rise to the trade route that made Dhofar famous.