Afghanistan: a rare specimen of snow leopard captured and soon released

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: Leemage via AFP 12:30 p.m., February 5, 2024

Afghan authorities have captured a rare specimen of a snow leopard that killed around 30 livestock in a mountainous region in the northeast of the country and are preparing to release it into the wild, a conservation group said on Sunday of wild life. The feline was captured Thursday evening after being trapped in a livestock enclosure in the rural Zibak district of Badakhshan province and killing some thirty animals, the district's deputy governor told AFP on Saturday. Abdulrahman Kasra.

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The young panther was taken to the governor's compound in Faizabad, the provincial capital, he added. A veterinarian treated a minor injury on one of the animal's legs and it will be released into the wild, Khorosh Sahel, head of the Badakhshan Wildlife Conservation Society, told AFP. “The authorities promised us that they would release him soon in Zibak district,” he said.

Species classified as “vulnerable”

The breeder whose animals were killed Thursday said he asked for government support after losing his only source of income. “Animals were the only assets I had to support my family,” Gangi Baig said.

Other Zibak residents told AFP they hoped authorities would carry out the plan to release the feline. "I hope that the Islamic Emirate will do everything in its power to protect wildlife in Badakhshan so that its natural heritage can be protected and the snow leopard does not disappear from the province," he told AFP. one of them, Mir Saeed.

Afghanistan's mountainous northeast is one of the rare natural habitats of the elusive feline, nicknamed "the ghost of the mountains". Snow leopards are classified as a "vulnerable" species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with their numbers declining due to the effects of climate change, loss of natural habitat and poaching.