Srinagar, Jan 27: Following heavy snowfall in the upper reaches of Kashmir, the wild animals are moving to the plains, leading to incidents of man-animal conflict. In one recent instance, a leopard was killed by people after sighting it in a village in Kashmir.A police official said that a villager was injured when a wild leopard attacked him near his residence at Loridora, Chandoosa in North Kashmir. “As people came to know about the incident, they chased the animal and hurling stones and bricks at it. Later, they managed to catch the leopard and killed it,” the official said.
A few weeks back, another leopard was killed in the same manner by villagers in Kashmir.
The man-animal conflicts are increasing as the upper reaches and mountains across Kashmir have witnessed heavy snowfall, forcing the wild animals to move towards human habitations. “Leopards, bears and their cubs, foxes and jackals have been seen roaming near human habitations near the forest area in Kashmir and scores of people have been killed in the wild animal attacks. In retaliatory action, some animals have also been killed,” an official from the Wild Life Department said.
He said that the people living close to forest area have been advised to avoid coming out in the open after dark as the movement of wild animals in human habitations will not cease unless the snow melts in the upper reaches.
23 January 2009
By Anna Malpas / Staff Writer Moscow Times
When a helicopter carrying senior government officials crashed into a
remote Altai mountainside earlier this month, killing several
passengers, the accident appeared to be nothing more than a tragic
loss of life.
But photographs snapped at the crash site have thrown a spotlight on
what conservationists say is a disturbingly popular pastime among the
country’s political and business elite: the expensive sport of
poaching from helicopters.
One photograph published on an Altai region web site shows the
carcasses of endangered argali sheep among the wreckage of the Mi-171
helicopter that crashed Jan. 9. One of the sheep has a knife sticking
out of its haunches.
The wild sheep is one of Russia‘s rarest animals, and hunting it is
punishable by up to two years in prison. The photograph prompted
ecologists to press prosecutors to investigate whether the officials
were hunting illegally when their helicopter went down.
Among the seven federal, regional and local officials killed in the
crash was Viktor Kaimin, the Altai republic’s top official charged
with protecting the region’s wildlife and whose committee was
responsible for issuing hunting licenses.
Regional prosecutors say no formal investigation has been opened into
whether the officials were engaging in illegal hunting, though
regional environmental officials said they would push for a probe
into the circumstances of the incident, which some ecologists and
political commentators have dubbed “Altaigate.”
Conservationists say it is an open secret that officials come to
Altai for hunting trips in which they simply shoot at animals from
hovering helicopters, despite a ban on the practice.
With its remote mountains, the pristine Gorny Altai region is popular
with hunters, and hunting is legal in some areas for Siberian goat
and red deer.
“Over the last decade, Altai has become a place where helicopter
hunting has become rather common,” said Alexei Vaisman, head of WWF-
Russia’s anti-animal trafficking program.
The officials in the fatal expedition had hunting licences for
Siberian goats and red deer, Yelena Kobzeva, a spokeswoman for the
Altai government, told Interfax. The photographs published on the
AltaPress.ru web site, however, clearly show animals with round
curved horns, while Siberian goats have tall, slightly curved horns.
Vaisman, whose organization has been joined by Greenpeace and other
environmental groups in calling for an investigation, said WWF-Russia
does not “want anyone’s blood.”
“We don’t want anyone to be imprisoned,” Vaisman said. “The main aim
of our actions is to make a court give an official legal assessment
of what happened.”
Also killed in the crash were Alexander Kosopkin, the Kremlin’s envoy
to the State Duma, and Sergei Livishin, a senior member of the
presidential administration.
Survivors included Anatoly Bannykh, deputy head of the Altai Republic‘s administration, and Nikolai Kopranov, an adviser to the
Duma’s Economic Policy Committee.
Gorny Altai attracts “VIP hunters,” said Oleg Mitvol, the outspoken
deputy head of Federal Inspection Service for Natural Resources Use.
“There are special lodges that can only be reached by helicopter,”
Mitvol said. “They are luxurious. Just imagine how much it costs to
stay there.”
Environmentalists say helicopter hunting trips cannot be organized
without the knowledge and support of local officials.
It’s “rather common” for regional officials to treat federal
officials to free hunting trips, Vaisman said. “It’s not a bribe,
it’s to make good relations, to get additional money to the region
from the federal center,” he said.
Low-level officials are often involved in organizing the trips too.
State game wardens receive “almost negligible” salaries of around
1,000 rubles ($32) per month, Vaisman said.
Such helicopter hunting trips are organized in Kamchatka, Magadan, Sakhalin and Primorye regions, Vaisman said. “It’s popular among high-
level officials and so-called New Russians, who think they are above
the law,” he said.
The targets can be mountain sheep, snow sheep, mountain goats, bears
or moose, Vaisman said. “They shoot directly from the helicopter and
then land to pick up any trophies,” he said.
Kobzeva, the AltaiRepublic administration spokeswoman, told The
Moscow Times by telephone that the officials who crashed earlier this
month were on a private trip and that no funds from the regional
budget were used to finance it. The administration has no information
on who ordered and paid for the trip, Kobzeva said.
Helicopter hunting trips even take place in nature reserves, said
Mikhail Paltsyn, a scientist with a UN-sponsored environmental
program called Biodiversity Conservation in the Russian Portion of
the Altai-Sayan Ecoregion.
“Helicopter hunts take place regularly for Siberian goats and red
deer in the ArgutRiver valley, in Shavlinsky nature reserve, where
hunting is completely banned,” Paltsyn said in e-mailed comments. “On
practically all our expeditions to the ArgutRiver valley, we see
hunting helicopters and find traces of such hunting. Local residents
say that helicopters with hunters come to these places every month.”
Last February, conservationists spotted a helicopter on two
consecutive days circling and apparently firing at Siberian goats and red deer. They wrote down the number and contacted game wardens and
police. “The people responsible were never found,” Paltsyn said. “It
looks like the servants of the people were hunting again.”
Hiring a helicopter costs tens of thousands of rubles per hour, said
Anatoly Mozharov, the editor of Safari magazine for hunters. Mozharov
stressed, however, that legitimate hunters use helicopters to fly to
far-flung areas and then hunt from the ground.
Killing a protected animal is a crime in Russia punishable by up to
two years. Relatively few poachers are ever convicted, however,
officials and environmentalists said.
“Very few investigations are ever opened regarding ecological
crimes,” Mitvol said. “Last year, practically none were opened.
Unfortunately, many VIP hunters take into account that no criminal
investigation will ever be opened against them.”
A spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General’s Office said the office had
no available data on the number of illegal hunting cases investigated
last year or the number of people convicted of poaching.
Convictions are rare in such cases because illegal hunting is “very,
very difficult to prove,” said Alexander Bondarev, head of the
Biodiversity Conservation in the Russian Portion of the Altai-Sayan
Ecoregion.
“Some people see a helicopter in the mountains, but it’s not possible
to determine which animal was shot,” he said.
In Gorny Altai, hunters often receive permission to shoot Siberian
goats — whose territory is close to that of the endangered argali
sheep, Bondarev said. The hunters can therefore claim that they are
shooting at the goats, not the wild sheep.
“The only possibility is to find the hunter near the animal,”
Bondarev said. “But it’s very difficult to prove that he killed this
animal.”
Bondarev’s organization was one of the first to issue a statement
identifying the animals in the photograph as argali sheep. The
organization focuses on the conservation of argali and the snow
leopard, both of which are listed as endangered in Russia.
The argali sheep is one of the region’s rarest species, and its
population in Russia numbers only a few hundred.
The argali are the largest wild sheep in the world. Their large,
curly horns, weighing around 50 kilograms, are prized as trophies.
The area where the helicopter crashed is home to the largest group of
argali sheep in Russia. Since they migrate between Mongolia and Russia, it is difficult to say how many sheep remain. In winter it
could be 100-150, while in summer they number up to 400, Paltsyn said.
“The greatest threat for argali is poaching, including hunting by
some local residents and hunting for pleasure and trophies by
visiting hunters,” Paltsyn said.
It is unclear how many argali are killed illegally each year in Russia, Bondarev said. He estimated that around six of the animals
are poached annually.
Kaimin, the environmental official killed in the crash, was embroiled
in a scandal in 2003 after he was purportedly seen hunting argali
sheep. AltaiRepublic lawmakers appealed to prosecutors to
investigate the incident, though the case was later dropped.
A spokesman for the Altai newspaper that reported on the story,
Postskriptum, said in a telephone interview that the case was dropped
because it rested exclusively on statements from witnesses.
Attempts to reach the AltaiRepublic‘s committee for the protection,
use and reproduction of the animal world — which Kaimin headed up
before his death — were unsuccessful. The committee had only five
members, of whom only one was an inspector, Paltsyn said. Until
recently, it had no transport, funds for raids or inspector team, he
said.
“If the fact of poaching is confirmed, then of course this
organization is just ineffective,” said Svetlana Shchegrina, head of
environmental education at the Altai regional nature reserve, which
also has a population of argali sheep. “It’s a terrible case.”
Innovative Conservation Project for Indian High Altitudes
Project Operational in Five Himalayan States viz. Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh
Thiru S. Regupathy said that Project Snow Leopard is a manifestation of the Government of India’s resolve to conserve biodiversity with community participation. To give it the same status of importance in the high altitude as that of Tiger in the terrestrial landscape, the ministry is launching the Project Snow Leopard in the country from today. Releasing a document on Project Snow Leopard here today, Mr Regupathy said that Snow Leopard is globally endangered species as well as the most important flagship species of the mountain region. They are at the apex of ecological pyramid suffer the most on account of relatively smaller population size and also because of man-animal conflict. This situation further gets aggravated by the hostile landscape forming its habitat. Referring to its globally endangered species status as well as the most important flagship species of the mountain region, the Minister informed that Snow Leopard has been included in the list of species under Recovery Programme to be funded through the umbrella scheme of integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats. Giving details of there habitat, Sh S Regupathy said there are more than 26 protected areas in the Himalayan landscape where snow leopard is reported. However, areas outside protected areas are equally important for a long range species like Snow Leopard.
Considering these facts, Sh Regupathy added that India is endowed with the unique wildlife assemblage of global importance in Himalayan and Trans Himalayan zones. Thus, implementation of Project Snow Leopard will give an opportunity for the conservation of this unique biodiversity. Stressing on active involvement of local communities, the Minister said application of landscape for conservation, capacity building of staff research on wildlife and human dimension in Snow Leopard habitat, adoptive management of project developing, grazing and management policies along with promotion of conservation and education awareness initiatives etc would require for conservation in these areas.
The biodiversity of the Himalayans includes at least 350 species of mammals, 1200 species of birds, species of amphibians and reptiles, and numerous plants including many with medicinal properties. Over 335 species of wild relatives of cultivated crops are also found in the region. There are numerous biologically important wetlands that form breeding grounds for waterfowl. These areas also provide vital ecosystem services that are important for the dense human populations downstream and in the Indo-Gengetic plans.
The project will be operational in five Himalayan States viz. Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh with active support from wildlife institute of India and the Mysore based Nature Conservation Foundation.
The project stresses on a landscape approach to conservation wherein smaller core zones with relatively conservation values will be identified and conserved with support and the larger landscape will be managed in such a way that it allows necessary development benefits to the local communities. The project thus places greater importance to careful and knowledge-based management planning of the landscapes. The adaptive management planning will involve participation of all key stakeholders so that action is taken by incorporating local wisdom and support. For facilitating effective planning and action, the project will set up enabling administrative mechanisms from the village duster level to the Central Government. At the Central level, a Steering Committee chaired by Director General of Forests & Special Secretary to the Government of India will help guide the project. Each State will have a State Snow Leopard Conservation Society that will coordinate work by the Landscape-level Implementation Committees, which in turn will coordinate work by the village Wildlife Conservation Committees.
The Project Snow Leopard is an Innovative project that would help to arrest species declines in the Indian high altitudes and would lead to conservation based on sound scientific plans and local support. Species such as Snow Leopard, Asiatic Ibex, Tibetan Argali, Ladakh Urial, Chiru, Takin, Serow and Musk Deer will particularly benefit from this project.
In partnership with the GTZ (German Technical Cooperation), the European Union, ADEME (French Environment and Energy Management Agency) and Fondation Ensemble, GERES (Group Renewable Energy, Environment and
Solidarity), an international French NGO specialised in energy and climate change issues, is organising a regional seminar on ‘The Challenge of Development in Energy-related Projects and Climate Change Adaptation Strategies in the Cold Regions of Asia’, to be held from April 21 to 24 2009 in Leh, Ladakh, Jammu&Kashmir, India. Should you wish to contribute(abstracts will be received until 2 February 2009) or participate, kindly visit our website on http://india.geres.eu/seminar.php for more details and registration.
If you need any financial support, you may request it and your demand will be reviewed by the organizing committee during the month of February.
