Tag: Afghanistan

WCS Discovers Healthy Snow Leopard Population In Afghanistan

**NEWS RELEASE**

CONTACT: STEPHEN SAUTNER: (1-718-220-3682; ssautner@wcs.org)

JOHN DELANEY: (1-718-220-3275; jdelaney@wcs.org)

WCS Discovers Healthy Snow Leopard Population In Afghanistan

Camera trap surveys show surprising numbers of elusive big cats in Wakhan Corridor in northeastern Afghanistan

With USAID support, WCS is working with Afghanistan communities on conservation to benefit wildlife and human livelihoods

NEW YORK (July 13, 2011) – The Wildlife Conservation Society has discovered a surprisingly healthy population of rare snow leopards living in the mountainous reaches of northeastern Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor, according to a new study.

The discovery gives hope to the world’s most elusive big cat, which calls home to some of the world’s tallest mountains. Between 4,500 and 7,500 snow leopards remain in the wild scattered across a dozen countries in Central Asia.

The study, which appears in the June 29th issue of the Journal of Environmental Studies, is by WCS conservationists Anthony Simms, Zalmai Moheb, Salahudin, Hussain Ali, Inayat Ali and Timothy Wood.

WCS-trained community rangers used camera traps to document the presence of snow leopards at 16 different locations across a wide landscape. The images represent the first camera trap records of snow leopards in Afghanistan. WCS has been conserving wildlife and improving local livelihoods in the region since 2006 with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“This is a wonderful discovery – it shows that there is real hope for snow leopards in Afghanistan,” said Peter Zahler, WCS Deputy Director for Asia Programs. “Now our goal is to ensure that these magnificent animals have a secure future as a key part of Afghanistan’s natural heritage.”

According to the study, snow leopards remain threatened in the region. Poaching for their pelts, persecution by shepherds, and the capture of live animals for the illegal pet trade have all been documented in the Wakhan Corridor. In response, WCS has developed a set of conservation initiatives to protect snow leopards. These include partnering with local communities, training of rangers, and education and outreach efforts.

Anthony Simms, lead author and the project’s Technical Advisor, said, “By developing a community-led management approach, we believe snow leopards will be conserved in Afghanistan over the long term.”

WCS-led initiatives are already paying off. Conservation education is now occurring in every school in the Wakhan region. Fifty-nine rangers have been trained to date. They monitor not only snow leopards but other species including Marco Polo sheep and ibex while also enforcing laws against poaching. WCS has also initiated the construction of predator-proof livestock corrals and a livestock insurance program that compensates shepherds, though initial WCS research shows that surprisingly few livestock fall to predators in the region.

In Afghanistan, USAID has provided support to WCS to work in more than 55 communities across the country and is training local people to monitor and sustainably manage their wildlife and other resources. One of the many outputs of this project was the creation of Afghanistan’s first national park – Band-e-Amir – which is now co-managed by the government and a committee consisting of all 14 communities living around the park.

Snow leopards have declined by as much as 20 percent over the past 16 years and are considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

WCS is a world leader in the care and conservation of snow leopards. WCS’s Bronx Zoo became the first zoo in the Western Hemisphere to exhibit these rare spotted cats in 1903. In the past three decades, nearly 80 cubs have been born in the Bronx and have been sent to live at 30 zoos in the U.S. and eight countries in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America.

The Wildlife Conservation Society saves wildlife and wild places worldwide. We do so through science, global conservation, education and the management of the world’s largest system of urban wildlife parks, led by the flagship Bronx Zoo. Together these activities change attitudes toward nature and help people imagine wildlife and humans living in harmony. WCS is committed to this mission because it is essential to the integrity of life on Earth. Visit: www.wcs.org

###

Special Note to the Media: If you would like to guide your readers or viewers to a Web link where they can make donations in support of helping save wildlife and wild places, please direct them to wcs.org.

WCS Digital Community:

Web Sites:

www.wcs.org ● www.bronxzoo.com ● www.centralparkzoo.com ● www.queenszoo.com ● www.prospectparkzoo.com● www.nyaquarium.com

Facebook:

Wildlife Conservation Society http://www.facebook.com/TheWCS

Bronx Zoo www.facebook.com/bronxzoo

Central Park Zoo http://www.facebook.com/centralparkzoo

Queens Zoo http://www.facebook.com/queenszoo

Prospect Park Zoo http://www.facebook.com/prospectparkzoo

New York Aquarium http://www.facebook.com/nyaquarium

WCS Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/WCSMedia

Kabul zoo officials in India seeking snow leopards

(AFP) – 1 day ago

KANPUR, India — A team of Afghan officials are in India to find an elephant and leopards for Kabul’s war-damaged zoo but transportation through Pakistan could be a problem, they said Thursday.

The Afghan capital’s zoo suffered severe damage during Taliban’s 1996-2001 regime and the authorities are now working to restock with animals donated from India.

“Afghanistan wants an elephant, a leopard and a snow leopard from India because at present it does not have these animals,” Kabul zoo director Aziz Gul Saqeb, who is leading the five-member team in India, told AFP.

“Indian authorities have agreed to help us regarding the upkeep of the elephant once it is transported to Kabul,” he said after inspecting animals in a state-run zoo in the northern Indian town of Kanpur.

Kabul zoo’s showpiece lion Marjan, who was blinded by a grenade blast in 1993, died in 2002.

India and Afghanistan have enjoyed good ties and since the US-led invasion ended the Taliban’s regime. Delhi has committed 1.3 billion dollars to Afghanistan — mainly aid for social services including health and education.

Some 4,000 Indians are building roads, sanitation projects and power lines in Afghanistan, and India is also building the new Afghan parliament.

Zoo chief Saqeb said his officials faced the prospect of a difficult journey with the animals through troubled Pakistan to landlocked Afghanistan.

Copyright © 2010 AFP.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jdat-2TawuKpxj-JcUz0tSj6IqMg?docId=CNG.94591e60ea7188c66e691af71595f0f4.431

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jdat-2TawuKpxj-JcUz0tSj6IqMg?docId=CNG.94591e60ea7188c66e691af71595f0f4.431

Villagers in Badakhshan, Afghanistan trapped snow leopard for sale but will be released once cat has recovered

Afghanistan protects newly rediscovered rare bird
By KAY JOHNSON (AP) – 1 day ago
KABUL — Afghanistan’s fledging conservation agency moved Sunday to protect one of the world’s rarest birds after the species was rediscovered in the war-ravaged country’s northeast.
The remote Pamir Mountains are the only known breeding area of the large-billed reed warbler, a species so elusive that it had been documented only twice before in more than a century.
A researcher with the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society stumbled upon the tiny, olive-brown bird during a wildlife survey in 2008 and taped its distinctive song. Later, a research team caught and released 20 of the birds — the largest number ever recorded.
On Sunday, Afghanistan‘s National Environment Protection Agency added the large-billed reed warbler to its list of protected species, which was established only last year.
Mustafa Zahir, the agency’s director-general, acknowledged the difficulties of trying to protect wildlife in a country preoccupied with the Taliban insurgency. On Friday, suicide attackers killed 16 people in Kabul, the capital, and thousands of Afghan and NATO forces are fighting to root out the hard-line Islamists from their southern stronghold.
But Zahir, who is the grandson of Afghanistan‘s former king, said the discovery of the large-billed reed warbler provided some welcome positive news.“It is not true that our country is full of only bad stories,” Zahir said. “This bird, after so many years, has been discovered here. Everyone thought it was extinct.”
The bird’s discovery in Afghanistan kicked off a small flurry in conservation circles.The large-billed reed warbler was first documented in India in 1867 but wasn’t found again until 2006 — with a single bird in Thailand. The Pamir Mountains, in the sparsely populated Badakhshan province near China, is now home to the world’s only known large population of the bird.The Afghan environmental agency also added 14 other species to the protected list on Sunday. It now includes 48 species including the rare snow leopard, the Asiatic cheetah and the markhor, a type of wild goat with large spiral horns.
While conservation efforts are in their infancy in Afghanistan, there have been some recent successes. Authorities in Badakhshan last week seized a snow leopard from villagers who had trapped it and planned to sell it. The snow leopard — one of an estimated 150 left in the wild — will be freed once its injuries from the trap are healed, Zahir said.Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jX2YfnI6k7kVgsWt1NsjBzQVtdOwD9E54HJ80

Rare photo shows endangered snow leopard in the wild

A trap camera took this rare photo of a snow leopard.

CAPTION

By Wildlife Conservation Society

The Wildlife Conservation Society released two photos Thursday of a snow leopard, an endangered cat that lives in the high mountains of Central Asia.These photos were taken by a trap camera in Sast Valley in Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor and sent to my colleague Dan Vergano,who wanted to share them with the pet community. Thank you, Dan. We’ll do more on wild cats and wolves in upcoming blogs.

WCS researchers are conducting ongoing wildlife surveys in this remote area with the goal of establishing a protected area. They found this endangered cat willing to strike a pose or two.

Trap cameras are placed in an animal’s habitat and are automatically triggered to go off when an animal goes by, allowing researchers to take photos without being nearby.

Snow leopards are on The World Conservation Union’s Red list of Endangered Species, the same endangered status given to the panda and tiger. Snow leopards are elusive creatures. Sightings are rare, partly because of how well they blend into the landscape. They weigh about 75-120 pounds (roughly seven to eight times the weight of a house cat and one-seventh to one-eighth the size of a tiger). They have large paws that allow them to jump up to 50 feet. More information about the cats and where they roam can be found at the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Snow Leopard Trust websites.

Peter Matthiessen writes about a magical journey he took on foot – what else? – in the rugged mountains of northwest Nepal with a wildlife biologist to look for these near-mythical creatures in The Snow Leopard.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/pawprintpost/post/2009/08/rare-photo-shows-endangered-snow-leopard-in-the-wild/1

WCS Assists Afghanistan In Releasing Its First-Ever List of Protected Species

WCS Assists Afghanistan In Releasing Its First-Ever List of Protected Species

By Fran Hackett 

Kabul, Afghanistan – The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced today that the Afghanistan’s National Environment Protection Agency (NEPA), in an effort to safeguard its natural heritage, has released the country’s first-ever list of protected species now banned from hunting or harvest.

The wide-ranging list of endangered and threatened species includes such well known wildlife as snow leopards, wolves, and brown bears, but also lesser-known species such as the paghman salamander, goitered gazelle, and Himalayan elm tree.

The list, consisting of 20 mammals, seven birds, four plants, and a single amphibian and insect, provides legal protection to Afghanistan’s wildlife, which have been devastated by more than 30 years of conflict.

NEPA, in partnership with the USAID-funded* Wildlife Conservation Society, the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock, and Kabul University created the Afghanistan Wildlife Executive Committee (AWEC) to facilitate the listing process. In July 2008, AWEC began evaluations of species such as the snow leopard, Marco Polo sheep, and Asiatic black bear. To make status determinations, AWEC and WCS worked with world-experts to obtain the most recent and accurate information available for Afghanistan and the region, and then evaluated those data using scientific criteria established by the global authority on species listing – the IUCN Red List. By the end of 2009, WCS says the list may be expanded to as many as 70 species.

“The Wildlife Conservation Society commends the Afghanistan’s National Environment Protection Agency for showing a continued commitment to conserving its natural heritage – even during these challenging times,” said Dr. Steven E. Sanderson, President and CEO of WCS. “WCS believes that conservation can often serve as diplomacy, and we are optimistic that this commitment to conservation will benefit all of Afghanistan’s people.”

In Afghanistan, species like the snow leopard are under pressure from excessive hunting, loss of key habitat and illegal trade. Snow leopard pelts for sale in tourist shops can go for as much as $1,500 each. International trade in species like the snow leopard is illegal under international law because it is globally endangered. Now that the snow leopard is protected under Afghan law, it is also illegal for Afghan nationals or internationals to hunt or trade the species within Afghanistan.

The protected species list also comes at a critical time for Afghanistan’s wild species. The Presidential Decree banning hunting in the country expired in March 2009. Only one week ago, it would have been legal for any person to kill an endangered species like the snow leopard in Afghanistan.

NEPA has also worked collaboratively with students at the University of Richmond in Virginia, USA to complete the listing process. In the spring semester of 2009, students conducted research on Afghan species for AWEC and participated electronically in an evaluation session to answer questions for the Committee. Six species assessed by students are now listed as protected in Afghanistan.

NEPA will be responsible for managing Afghanistan’s protected species including writing recovery plans for species designated as threatened. Species will be re-evaluated every five years to determine whether populations have recovered to the extent where they may be removed from the protected list.

NEPA gratefully acknowledges the assistance it has received from the international community including the USAID funded program of the Wildlife Conservation Society, and looks forward to its continued partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Livestock and Kabul University in managing Afghanistan’s threatened and endangered species.

Last month, Afghanistan announced the creation of its first national park: Band-e-Amir, a spectacular series of six deep blue lakes separated by natural dams made of travertine, a mineral deposit.

WCS is currently the only organization conducting ongoing scientific conservation studies in Afghanistan in the past 30 years, and is continuing to work with the Afghan government to establish a network or parks and protected areas.

The Wildlife Conservation Society saves wildlife and wild places worldwide. We do so through science, global conservation, education and the management of the world’s largest system of urban wildlife parks, led by the flagship Bronx Zoo. Together these activities change attitudes towards nature and help people imagine wildlife and humans living in harmony. WCS is committed to this mission because it is essential to the integrity of life on Earth. Visit: www.wcs.org

http://www.zandavisitor.com/newsarticle-1562-WCS_Assists_Afghanistan_In_Releasing_Its_First-Ever_List_of_Protected_Species

Afghanistan announces first national park on Earth Day

Jeremy Hance
mongabay.com
April 22, 2009

War-wearied Afghanis received uplifting news on Earth Day this year. Their government has announced the creation of the nation’s first national park, Band-e-Amir, protecting a one-of-a-kind landscape encompassing six sky-blue lakes separated by natural dams.

Announced by Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) at a ceremony in the FAO Building at the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Livestock in Kabul this morning, key funding for the park was provided by The United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

In addition, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) provided support with wildlife surveys, identifying park boundaries, and working with local government and communities. WCS developed the management plan and laws for the park. The park’s creators hope the system set up for Band-e-Amir National Park will be extended to new parks in the future.

“At its core, Band-e-Amir is an Afghan initiative supported by the international community. It is a park created for Afghans, by Afghans, for the new Afghanistan,” said Dr. Steven E. Sanderson, President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society. “Band-e-Amir will be Afghanistan’s first national park and sets the precedent for a future national park system.”

The park will be protecting one of Afghanistan’s most treasured natural areas. Six lakes resting high in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Central Afghanistan are separated by natural dams made from the rare mineral deposit travertine. Such systems are found in only a few place in the world, most of which are on the UNESCO World Heritage list, a future goal for Afghanistan’s first park. Pollution and human degradation of the fragile travertine dams currently threaten the park.

Unfortunately much of the park’s wildlife has already been lost. But surveys for the new park found ibex; urials, a wild sheep with massive horns; wolves; foxes; and the Afghan snow finch, the only endemic bird in the country. Snow leopards used to dwell in the region but vanished during the 1980s because of hunting.

While Band-e-Amir is not new to travelers it has been little visited since war engulfed the Afghanistan in 1979. After the nation gained some stability following the American-led invasion in 2001, thousands of Afghan tourists returned to Band-e-Amir. As well as natural beauty, the park has religious significance since it is believed the third caliph of Islam visited the region. With the new region’s status and publicity, the country hopes to attract international visitors.

Next on the list, Afghanistan is looking at creating a network of parks, including possible protection for the abundant wildlife in the Pamir Mountains.

http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0421-hance_bandeamir.html

Camping in Kabul, April 2009

Photographs & Text By Michael Obert
Translated by Jason Nickels

 

An excerpt from the article that mentions availability of snow leopard fur coats:

 

Chicken Street, in downtown Kabul, is a string of souvenir shops. Indeed, the only thing that you cannot buy on Chicken Street is chickens, which are available a little further along, on Flower Street. Shop windows boast everything from blown glass from Herat and embroidery from Uzbekistan, to coats made from the fur of the last of the snow leopards, semi-precious lapis lazuli, Central Asian antiques, kilim and Persian rugs. Some of the rugs feature the face of George W Bush wailing bitterly; others depict the World Trade Center in flames as an F-16 squadron flies over an outline of Afghanistan.

 

http://www.himalmag.com/Camping-in-Kabul_nw2895.html

Afghanistan: Deforestation marches on

From the Thomas Reuters Foundation AlertNet:  17 Mar 2009 09:22:39 GMT Source: IRIN Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author’s alone. JALALABAD, 17 March 2009 (IRIN) – The eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar has lost about 90 percent of its forests since 1989 – a major contributory factor to aridity, air pollution, loss of habitat and vulnerability to flash floods, according to experts and provincial officials.  Millions of trees have been lost in Nangarhar and the neighbouring provinces of Kunar and Nooristan and the ecosystem has been severely damaged because of deforestation, in part induced by drought, officials say.  In 2006 Afghan President Hamid Karzai banned tree-felling, but deforestation has continued with large-scale illegal timber exports.  Trees have also been cut down by people in need of firewood for heating and cooking. “People still cut [down] trees on a large scale because we lack adequate means to stop them,” Hamidullah Nazir, forestry management officer at the department of agriculture in Nangarhar, told IRIN.  “In the past, over 134,000 hectares of land in the 11 districts of Nangarhar Province were forest, but now tree cover is down to less than 15,000 hectares,” Nazir said.  Large tracts of forest have also been lost to what were initially small fires. These often get out of control as Nangarhar only has two fire engines and very limited fire-fighting resources.  Afghan cities such as Kabul and Jalalabad (the capital of Nangarhar Province) are facing a serious crisis of air pollution which threatens public health, the National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) has warned, and it linked current pollution levels to rapid deforestation: Forests are effective in soaking up carbon dioxide and producing oxygen.  Deforestation has also made the country more prone to flash floods and landslides. Every year floods cause human deaths and loss of property in Nangarhar, Kunar and Laghman provinces, according to the Afghanistan National Disasters Management Authority.  “Deforestation has contributed to the longstanding drought in the country,” Ahmad Bakhtyar, an expert at the Ministry of Agriculture, told IRIN.  The country has also lost much of its wildlife such as snow leopard, Marco Polo sheep and Asiatic black bear because of deforestation, climate change and other environmental impacts.  Ranked the fifth least developed country in the world by the UN Development Programme, Afghanistan does not have sufficient institutional means to ensure better forest management, which has received little, if any, support from the government and its international backers in the past seven years.  af/ad/ar/cb© IRIN. All rights reserved. More humanitarian news and analysis: http://www.IRINnews.org  

A Force for Endangered Species: George Schaller

By Patrice O’Shaughnessy of the New York Daily News

Tuesday, February 24th 2009, 1:24 AM

He’s an unassuming man, with gray hair, pale eyes and a measured voice. But if not for George Schaller, there’d probably be a lot less spectacular beauty in the world.

At 75, he has devoted half a century to saving endangered creatures and habitats all over the planet. It’s a never-ending task.

“You can never relax, and say something is okay,” he said, and noted a new threat.

The influx of Chinese workers to Africa, he said, has spawned a trade in lion bones, sent back to China for medicinal purposes.

“In Kenya, they put an insecticide in cow carcasses, and they kill off the whole pride,” he said. “There are only about 20,000 lions left in the world.”

Schaller is on the case.

And he says he’ll keep at his conservation efforts “for another 25 years.”

The senior conservationist for the Wildlife Conservation Society, Schaller has an office in the Bronx Zoo, but you’ll rarely see him there.

He visits animals in the wild, living for months or years at a time observing snow leopards in Pakistan, gorillas in Rwanda, lions in the Serengeti, pandas in China and the last Asiatic cheetahs in Iran to better learn how to protect them.

We caught up with him at the zoo last week, where he has been a researcher in animal behavior with the WCS since 1966, before he embarks on a round of trips to Iran, Brazil and Tibet.

Schaller was deemed “perhaps the greatest force for conservation in more than a century” by National Geographic magazine.

His efforts have led to the protection of threatened jungles and forests in Asia and South America, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

Discover magazine said he is considered the finest field biologist of our time.

Schaller has spent 50 years up close with exotic animals, tracking them, jotting notes in a small notebook and taking photographs, doing it the old-fashioned way.

He conducted a groundbreaking ecological study of mountain gorillas when he was 25, becoming the first scientist to live in their habitat. Now he is focusing on Marco Polo sheep, notable for their majestic spiral horns.

“Professors said gorillas were too dangerous, but I found them very congenial. They’re big, beautiful hairy relatives,” he said.

“I started out because I like to watch animals; that’s the fun part,” he said.

“Then, you have to worry about livelihood of communities” encroaching on the habitats.”

At 14, after World War II, he came to the U.S. from Berlin with his American mother, and retains a slight German accent. His first field trip was to the Arctic slope in Alaska.

“The oil companies wanted to drill. Luckily, they didn’t,” he said. As of 2006, “the place is still beautiful .. . no roads, lots of caribou and grizzly bears.”

He and his wife, Kay, “the perfect co-worker,” raised two sons in exotic locales. She still accompanies him on some trips.

“The most wonderful place is Serengeti and Tanzania,” he said. “You literally see a million animals spread before you.”

He writes even more than he travels. Schaller has penned seven books and scores of articles with titles like, “Courtship Behavior of the Wild Goat,” and “Effects of a Snowstorm on Tibetan Antelope.”

On Thursday, Schaller will preside at a symposium at Rockefeller University on Manhattan‘s East Side.

It’s a commemoration of his years with the WCS, celebrating his contribution to science. A panel of international conservationists will examine the status of key species and landscapes that Schaller has brought to the world’s attention.

Is he excited about the symposium? He looked a little uncomfortable, and said, “Why do you think I am always overseas?”

Schaller is passionate, though, about his prized project, first conceived in the 1980s.

He envisions the Pamir International Peace Park, at the nexus of Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and Tajikistan. It will be a refuge for Marco Polo sheep.

“We had a meeting of all four countries,” he said.

He has never let war, strife, the political squabbles of humans or borders stop him.

As he wrote in one of his books, “I live in a geography of dreams. …”

poshaughnessy@nydailynews.com

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/bronx/2009/02/23/2009-02-23_a_force_for_endangered_species-1.html