Cactus pear (Opuntia ficus-indica (L.) Mill.) has been suggested as a sustainable crop for the dry regions of the world because it is used for a variety of products including: green fodder and fodder reserves for livestock, fruit and pads for direct human consumption, and high value organic oils in marginal agricultural regions. Cactus is being considered for introduction into new regions for these qualities. Because importation, site testing, and evaluation can take years, it is important to predict which locations are most suitable for the cultivation this species. We developed a niche habitat model that employs a weighted sums multi-criteria decision analysis approach to predict areas most likely for suitability. The model utilizes climatic, elevation, and other variables in a raster format along with the positions of known plantations of cactus to define the environmental or niche tolerance of the plant. The niche tolerance is then applied to environmental variables for the area of interest to determine which sites most closely resemble the conditions under which cactus thrives. The result is a theoretical habitat suitability index for the new area or region. For our model, we chose a scale of 30 arc seconds or approximately 1 square kilometer and our area of interest was the eastern Mediterranean region. Suitability maps were produced using data from WorldClim climate layers and the GTOPO30 elevation models.