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Endangered Species: Leopard on the spot in Phakar, Pakistan

by S.Mujahid Ali Shah
Sunday, 22 Mar, 2009 | 02:34 AM PST |

This is a story about my village called Phakar, in the Nagar Valley 80 km northeast to Gilgit in the Karakoram Mountains. The average altitude is 2600M with mountain cliffs and caves, some of them being totally inaccessible for humans. I live in the northern deep corner of the village called Gutum which means Deep Valley in Brushasky.

It so happened that a snow leopard family chose a cliff called Chokobat about 200 meters north to my house to live and raise cubs. One day a woman grazing her flock, saw a goat belonging to our neighbors fall down Mount Chokobat to Korang , a deep, narrow and steep gully beneath the lower village of Ghamadass, with Hunza river beneath. It was a snow leopard that had killed the goat; as it throws the prey away after sucking the blood from its throat.

The next day she went with her son to the caves some 200 metres north of my house behind the cliff of Chokobat to look for the den. They could n’t proceed beyond a certain point as the terrain was deviously dangerous.

Following the first strike, the snow leopard killed six more of the village cattle. A cub was killed by one of our hunters and the following night the parents of the cub terrified the village with their roaring and nobody dared to step out.

A week later, behind the mount Uyum Tong which lies east to my house, a woman saw two leopards as she was about to enter the cattle house to milk her goats. She quickly shut the door and bolted it with an iron chain, rushing back to the house crying ‘tha tha tha’, which means snow leopard.

Finally when the snow leopard entered a cattle house in Nagra and Hunza from an opening in the roof called sagam, (meant for light); the Hadulkutz clan decided to catch it alive. They called Meherban Ali from the Nazarbekutz clan. He was a tall man known for catching wild beasts. He cut a long branch of a poplar tree and went up the cattle house roof, pressing the branch to the leopard’s throat, while four young men entered the cattle house and chained both the leopards. The whole village rewarded him with a kilo of flour per family.

After much debate of what to do with the animals, it was eventually decided that instead of killing them and decorating the house with leopard skins, they would be kept alive.

Syed Yaha Shah, the pioneer Nature Conservation activist from Northern Areas was contacted who promptly arrived from Minapin to Phakar in an NGO pick up. He spoke to the people about the rare species they had captured and that Meherban Ali would be rewarded by the government and the NGO for breaking a thousand year tradition of not killing the beast.

Both animals were driven to Gilgit by the oldest driver of Phakar in his jeep, along with Meherban Ali, three village elders and Syed Yahya himself.

Two years later, I returned to my village on completion of my Masters at Karachi University. I met Meherban Ali who told me that the government had not yet given him any reward or appreciation. Syed Yahya Shah had written a book Tauze ul Wsail where he mentioned the story. I told him that the book had been dedicated to Meherban Ali and his friends.

He smiled but was not as happy as he would have been if he had received recognition from the government.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/in-paper-magazine/images/endangered+species+leopard+on+the+spot

India approves plans to reintroduce cheetah (snow leopard status mentioned)

Eighteen cheetahs to be imported from Iran, Namibia and South Africa more than 60 years after the species was hunted to extinction

Jason Burke guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 July 2010 16.40 BST

The cheetah is to return to India, more than 60 years after the last three were shot dead by hunters on the subcontinent.

Indian minister for the environment and forests, Jairam Ramesh, has picked three sites for the reintroduction of the animal within a year. Eighteen cheetahs are to be brought from Iran, Namibia and South Africa. A budget of over £500,000 has been made available to prepare the sites for their release.

“It is important to bring the cheetah back as it will help restore the grasslands of India,” Ramesh said. “The way the tiger restores forest ecosystems, the snow leopard restores mountain ecosystems, and the Gangetic dolphin restores waters in the rivers, in the same way the cheetah will restore our grasslands.”

India’s wildlife has struggled in recent decades. The country’s world famous population of tigers has shrunk from more than 3,600 in 2002 to around 1,400 now. Successive government initiatives have foundered on corruption; conflicts between often extremely poor local communities and the animals; the power of organised criminal smuggling networks which supply tiger parts to east Asia, and simple administrative inertia. The population of snow leopards now numbers between 100 and 200, possibly less than a third of the total a decade ago. The Gangetic dolphin remains endangered, although the number of Asiatic lions has recently increased.

India’s last wild cheetahs are thought to have been shot by the Maharajah of Surguja in 1947.

“Nature has given us something that we did not know how to keep. Why do we think we can recreate it? Why do we think we will be able to keep it better now?,” Dr Ali Sher, cheetah expert at the Indian Institute of Immunology told the Guardian.

Many experts believe that with the herds of deer and antelopes that once provided the cheetahs’ diet also long gone, the project is bound to fail.

The objections were rejected by Ramesh, the minister.

“Reintroduction is matter of national importance, as cheetah is the only mammal to [become] extinct from India. ” he said.

The three sites recommended by scientists for the project (pdf) are the Kuno-Palpur Wildlife Sanctuary and Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary in the central state of Madhya Pradesh and Shahgarh in the desert near Jaisalmer in Rajasthan.

Eventually it is hoped the three reserves will sustain a population of over 100 cheetahs, creating a thriving tourist business which will benefit local communities.

“The return of the cheetah would make India the only country in the world to host six of the world’s eight large cats and the only one to have all the large cats of Asia,” MK Ranjitsinh of Wildlife Trust of India told the Press Trust of India news agency.

Freeman Award for Snow Leopard Conservation: Rinchen Wangchuk

Freeman Award for Snow Leopard Conservation

The Snow Leopard Trust is happy to announce that Rinchen Wangchuk has been selected as the recipient of the Freeman Award for Snow Leopard Conservation. The award established by the family of Helen Freeman to recognize leaders in snow leopard conservation comes with an honorarium of US$1,000.

Rinchen is currently the Director for the Snow Leopard Conservancy – India, based in Leh, Ladakh. Rinchen and his team work closely with livestock herding communities to predator-proof nighttime corrals, and train local people, especially women and young men, in ways of enhancing their income generation skills in activities closely linked with the conservation of snow leopards. At another level, he assists local non-government organizations build capacity for protecting India’s rich mountain biodiversity.

One of Rinchen’s greatest achievements has been his role in rural tourism initiatives that enabled launching the award-winning Himalayan Homestay program, a highly acclaimed UNESCO-sponsored project. SLC-India and its broadly-based snow leopard conservation program now operate as an independent organization, having started as a project of the Snow Leopard Conservancy – USA.

Rinchen’s commitment to working for the welfare of wildlife and rural people has grown out of his own Ladakhi village upbringing and his experiences as a skilled mountaineer and more recently, a nature tour guide. With fellow Indian climbers, he summited the 24,660-foot Saser Kangri II in Ladakh’s Nubra region. He received special training in community-based tourism from The Mountain Institute (Nepal) and RECROFT (Thailand). Rinchen also assisted researchers to develop the Earth watch program, “Land of the Snow Leopard.” He has served as a naturalist and assistant on several documentaries filmed in Hemis National Park, including the widely acclaimed “Silent Roar: Searching for the Snow Leopard.”

Please join us in congratulating Rinchen on this well deserved recognition for his years of service towards snow leopard conservation.

New challenges in conserving Pakistani snow leopards

* Only 300 to 420 wild snow leopards left in mountain ranges of Pakistan
* Snow leopards’ habitat threatened by climate change, rising temperatures

By Syed Mujahid Ali Shah

In Pakistan, the northern mountain ranges of the Himalayas — Karakoram , Hindukush and Pamir — Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan host one of the most fascinating animals of the world: the snow leopard. The magnificent animal is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red-list of endangered species.

According to a recent scientific study by Yale University, there are 300 to 420 estimated snow leopards left in these snow-covered mountain ranges of Pakistan, out of a total estimated world population of 4,000 to 7,000. This region is the main corridor of connecting bigger populations of snow leopards living in Pakistan, Central Asia, China, India and Nepal.

Climate change and increasing temperatures have caused fast degradation of the bio-tops in these mountains, which also host wild species of ibex, Marcopolo sheep, blue sheep, Astor Markhor and the musk deer, on which the snow leopard depends.

This has resulted in a tough inter and intra-specie survival competition. Due to food shortage in its natural sanctuaries, snow leopards have started moving down to villages in search of food and frequent encounters with cattle herds are now being reported from villages near Khunjerab National Park and Central Karakoram National Park in Hunza-Nagar district. Two decades ago, the government started ‘trophy hunting’ programmes in collaboration with mountain villagers in these regions to protect the snow leopard and its prey. Such hunting expeditions cost $3,000 to $80,000 and 80 percent of the money goes directly to the mountain communities, while 20 percent goes to the Forest and Wildlife Department in Gilgit-Baltistan.

The project has showed positive results in stopping illegal hunting of Marcopolo sheep, ibex, Astore Markhor and blue sheep.

Faced with an alarming future scenario in the shape of critical depletion of the snow leopard’s prey species, the conservation of wild fauna in these mountains will need more than just relying on trophy hunting projects.

As a new protection strategy, measures can be taken in the form of incentive programmes for the villagers to help them conserve wild life hot spots, as well as new awareness and educational campaigns on mass-level in these mountain regions.

As we are already on the verge of losing this endangered wild species — mainly due to lack of awareness and direct dependency of the local population on natural resources — the world should show responsibility by realising the value of Pakistani snow leopards and play its role in protecting them through economic and educational means.

Syed Mujahid Ali Shah is a student of Landscape Ecology and Nature Conservation in Germany.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010%5C07%5C21%5Cstory_21-7-2010_pg7_15

Asian Officials Extend Lifeline For Wild Tigers (mentions use of snow leopard skins towards the end of the article)

Katie Hamann | Denpasar, Bali 14 July 2010: VOA News

Countries Work on Agreement to Save Tigers

Wild tigers have been offered a lifeline by countries where they still roam. The countries have agreed to work together to double the tiger population within 12 years. Officials from 13 countries gathered in Bali agreed to increase law enforcement to protect the tigers and preserve their habitats across Asia.

A Sumatran tiger roars in protest at his captors from the Indonesian forestry department. The animal had rampaged through villages and palm oil plantations in search of food, killing four farmers. After months in captivity, the cat was released into a Sumatran national park.

In an ongoing battle for territory between humans and wild tigers, tigers are the biggest losers. Rapidly shrinking habitats and poaching are decimating their populations.

The World Wildlife Fund estimates the number of wild tigers has declined by 40 percent in the past decade, to about 3,200 animals with only 1,000 actively breeding females.

In an effort to arrest this slide into extinction, leaders from 13 tiger nations gathered this week in Bali to draft a declaration on conservation, as part of the Global Tiger Recovery Program. The program is led by the World Bank and a coalition of international non-profit organizations. The centerpiece of the nations’ commitment is an ambitious plan to double the number of wild tigers by 2022.

Underscoring the immensity of this challenge, several countries said the goal is unrealistic.

Indian delegation leader S. P. Yadav says his country will focus on stabilizing tiger numbers in existing conservation areas.

“We are the largest, tiger-range country,” said S. P. Yadav. “We have around 1,500 tigers in the wild; so almost 50 percent of tigers are in India. We have identified 39 tiger reserves, covering an area of around 32,000 square kilometers. Within this number of tigers and the area, we are facing the problem of tiger-man conflict, and in some areas, it is a very serious issue. So there is very little scope in further enhancing the area to accommodate more tigers in our country.”

The Wildlife Conservation Societies’ vice president for conservation and science, John Robinson, says is it possible to double the number of tigers as planned.

“Within protected areas we could increase overall tiger numbers probably by 50 to 60 percent, and the tigers within those protected areas would still not reach the carrying capacity of that habitat,” said John Robinson. “And that gives an ability to bring these numbers back rather dramatically. Across broader tiger landscapes, if protection was put into place, if we could control the illegal hunting, we could bring back very significant tiger numbers”

Conservationists agree poaching presents the greatest threat to tiger populations. Poaching and the international trade in tigers and tiger parts is increasing across the region.

John Sellers heads the enforcement office of the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES.

“I think if you had looked at this area 10 to 15 years ago, you would have found that a lot of the demand was taking place amongst Asian ethnic communities in either North America and Europe,” said John Sellers. “That really has disappeared now. Instead, I think the market is now amongst the wealthy in parts of Asia, particularly China, where they have the money to pay for the genuine article. There are undoubtedly practitioners with the contacts to acquire this. I remember speaking to a practitioner in Thailand a few years ago who told me he had traveled to the border with Myanmar in order to purchase genuine tiger bones.”

The sale of tiger parts is prohibited in most tiger countries and the penalty for poachers in China is death. But law enforcement within countries and across national boundaries remains weak and disorganized.

In recent years new markets for tiger products have emerged. Some animal parks in China openly sell tiger bone wine, just one product spurring the establishment of tiger-breeding farms.

John Sellers says in some parts of China and Tibet a revival of old traditions is driving the market for tiger pelts.

“From what I understand in Tibet, it was traditional for warriors who had been brave in battle to be presented with a small piece of animal skin, such as a tiger or leopard – a snow leopard – just as the way a soldier would be in the West might be presented with a medal,” he said. “And so what had been a traditional practice using small parts of skin, then just grew into this situation where they began to build huge panels of tiger and leopard skin into these chubas, the traditional jackets that the local communities wear there.”

Early estimates suggest the cost of implementing the global tiger project will be more than $350 million, and more if the target of doubling tiger numbers within 12 years is to be met.

World Bank Global Tiger Initiative Director, Keshav Varma, says tiger nations have some capacity for funding tiger conservation, but wealthy nations will have to contribute.

“This sector is extremely poorly resourced,” said Keshav Varma. “It does not have money for minimum sustainable management. So we need more resources. And I think this is again an opportunity for global leaders to really understand the value of ecosystems.”

Included in the draft declaration was a commitment from tiger countries to collaborate and coordinate efforts to protect tigers and their habitats across national boundaries and to improve enforcement of anti-poaching and trafficking laws.

The Bali meeting’s draft declaration will be presented to government leaders for ratification at a September summit in St. Petersburg, Russia.

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/asia/Asian-Officials-Extend-Lifeline-For-Wild-Tigers-98437834.html

Article from August 2006: Endangered cats leave ‘trail of fear’: Snow leopards tracked by monitoring fright of their prey.

Published online 10 August 2006 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news060807-12

Endangered cats leave ‘trail of fear’: Snow leopards tracked by monitoring fright of their prey.

Michael Hopkin

The endangered snow leopard has returned to the valleys around Mount Everest, say wildlife researchers working in Nepal. And how do they know it’s back? Because the leopards’ traditional prey are terrified.

Tracking top predators by spotting the fear they instil in their prey could offer a new way to monitor the conservation status of rare animals, says Som Ale of the University of Illinois-Chicago, who came up with the idea. “We can get clues about their whereabouts from the behaviour of their main prey species,” he says.

He and his colleague Joel Brown tracked the elusive snow leopard (Uncia uncia) by observing the behaviour of its usual prey, the Himalayan tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus), a relative of wild goats.

The leopards, of which there are only around 6,000 left in the wild, had vanished completely from the foothills of Everest after the region was opened up to tourists in the years following the first conquest of the mountain in 1953.

The tahr have had a relatively easy ride since 1976, when Everest and the surrounding area were declared a national park. But since 2000, their population has stopped growing and the number of mothers with young has dwindled, leading some conservationists to suspect that the snow leopard was back.

The problem lay in proving it — spotting the leopards is immensely difficult. “For many conservationists it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event,” Ale says. But the tahr are much better at spotting leopards; after all, their lives can depend on it.

On the look-out
The researchers therefore sought to spot the hallmarks of fear among the previously complacent tahr. Signs include ears standing on end, eyes focused into the distance, and a whistling cry used to communicate danger to other tahr.

Ale and Brown found that the tahr were most vigilant on cliffs and in open forests. And when they checked these habitats, they found droppings and paw-prints from the leopards. Ale presented the results at the meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Memphis, Tennessee.

What’s more, observation of the tahr led to six direct sightings of the leopards, Ale says. Simply watching the tahr will not allow a census of the leopard population. But if it leads to direct leopard visuals it may be valuable in estimating how many leopards are living in the area.

Of course, the plan would not have worked at all but for the fact that the tahr have no other natural predators, meaning that they only get scared of leopards. Not even the local people are a threat. “The people who live there are Sherpas, who are Buddhists,” Ale explains.

That meant that the researchers could get within some 20 metres of the tahr without causing them to flee, says Ale — which was useful for monitoring their behaviour. “And it meant we got really good photos of them,” he adds.

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060807/full/news060807-12.html

Mapping a vision for their lands

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/mapping-a-vision-for-their-lands/article1522597/

Mark Hume

Vancouver — Published on Sunday, Apr. 04, 2010
Does a place exist if it isn’t on a map?

In today’s complex regulatory and legal world, the simple answer is that if you can’t prove it’s there, then it’s probably not.

It’s pretty hard, for example, to go to court to stop a mining company from building an access road across a moose pasture, if all you can do is put an elder on the witness stand who says he used to hunt around there, somewhere.

And on what basis do you draw border lines in land-claim negotiations? Where’s the evidence this watershed or that mountain range was vital to a tribe’s existence?

To deal with the burden of proof placed on them by courts and government, native organizations have been mapping the use and occupancy of their lands for about 35 years.

Some of that cartography has been haphazard, and dismissed by courts, just as some of it has been brilliant, laying the foundation for comprehensive land-claim settlements.

But it’s only now, with the publication in British Columbiaof a new guide book on indigenous use-and-occupancy mapping, that a gold standard has been set for what these maps should be like.

And it could change the way we look at Canada.

Living Proof, written by Terry Tobias, has been causing a stir since it was released in Vancouver last month by Ecotrust Canada and the Union of BC Indian Chiefs.

Each of the 200 bands in British Columbia now has a copy, more are being shipped across the country and interest is being expressed by aboriginal groups from the High Arctic to South America.

The book, seven years in the making, lays down the foundation for creating exquisitely detailed maps that show how native people use the land on which they live.

And it has just won an award from the Alcuin Society, for being the best designed reference book in Canada.

“This is a very prestigious award, and it means the book will get shown around the world,” Ian Gill, president of Ecotrust Canada said in an e-mail. “More importantly, it is going to be the basis for redrawing the map of Canada [and Australia] I believe, and will be a tremendous aid to first nations that are trying to articulate a more conservation-based vision for their lands.”

He mentions Australia because while the book was being put together, a delegation from there came to study how use-and-occupancy maps were being done by Mr. Tobias. The author was then invited back to help aboriginals in South Australia with mapping. A chapter covers that project and there is also a section on the Canadian Arctic.

“It’s kind of ironic,” said Mr. Gill, “but the indigenous mapping that’s being done in the Arctic could end up substantiating the government’s claim to sovereignty there.” International bodies might easily ignore the route taken by Canadian ice breakers as proof of occupancy. But a map that shows where a native community has hunted seals and whales for 5,000 years is difficult to dismiss.

At a book launch last week Thomas Berger, one of B.C.’s leading legal figures and former head of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline inquiry, described Living Proof as a “magnificent object.”

In a foreword to the book, he says governments have long used maps to assert control over land occupied by aboriginal people, but now native groups are using modern cartography for their own purposes.

“Armed with their own maps, they are enjoying greater success in blocking attempts to annex their lands and appropriate their resources,” he wrote.

Gregory Kehm, program director at Ecotrust Canada and a member of the editorial committee, said the information found in the maps – locating everything from berry patches to sacred sites – was long held secret by native communities. But a new generation of leaders became convinced that “if you lock up this information, you are defeating yourselves.”

In other words, they realized that to make their world real to our world, they had to map it.

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Snow Leopard Day children’s eco-festival took place in Altai Republic

http://www.wwf.ru/resources/news/article/6596 (Russian language)

19 May 2010

The WWF, FSDA, Ukok Nature Park and Altaisky Zapovednik organized event was on May 26 was for all school children. They learned about snow leopard, their prey, and habitat with a decided conservation slant. Drawing competitions, arts & crafts, etc. Organizers specifically selected Kosh-Agach Rayon for conducting the event, as the region is home to important snow leopard habitat.

Thank you to SLN member Jennifer Castner for this English-language summary.

Himalayan Snow Leopard Research Centre to be set up in Himachal Pradesh, India

Friday, June 18, 2010

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_himalayan-snow-leopard-research-centre-to-be-set-up-in-himachal-pradesh_1398211

Shimla: With an aim to boost research and conservation of snow Leopards in the country, Himachal Pradesh would soon set up an international level research centre in Spiti valley, a senior officer of state Forest department said today.

“Himalayan Snow Leopard Research Centre” would be set up in Spiti valley of tribal Lahaul & Spiti district under the scheme of integrated development of wild life, principal chief conservator of forest AK Gulati told PTI.

“The Rs5.50 crore project to be funded by Union ministry of forest and environment, would emphasis on research and training on conservation of snow Leopard”, Gulati added.

This would be the first comprehensive snow Leopard radio collaring centre in India, he said.

The centre would have a fully equipped field station laboratory with necessary instruments, he added.

Only Mongolia has such facility at present.

The HP has a population of 35 snow Leopards as per 2004 census out of which 23 is in Spiti valley itself, Gulati said.

Mongolian Marmot book published; half of the proceeds will benefit snow leopard research

June 2010: A. Jegal of the Mongolian Biosphere and Ecology Association would like to announce that the book “Mongolian Marmot: Biology, Ecology, Conservation and Use”, written by Ya. Adiya, has been published. Each chapter of the 178-page book contains a summary in English. Half of the profits from this book will support snow leopard research. If you are interested in purchasing the book, please contact the author directly at: adiya_ ya@yahoo.com.