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By APD writer Muhammad Sohail
**ISLAMABAD, Sept. 27 (APD) ** -- The Pakistani government has allocated an amount of 4.5 million U.S. dollars for the protection of the vulnerable snow leopard in its northern areas, an official statement said on Wednesday.
The funds will be spent to protect the vanishing breed of snow leopards in the country’s northern semi-autonomous region of Gilgit-Baltistan.
Snow leopards in northern areas of Pakistan.
Snow leopards live in the high mountains of the Karakoram and Hindukush region located in the north of Pakistan.
The animals are mainly found in the Pakistani areas of Baltistan, Chitral, Gilgit, Upper Swat Valley, and the slopes of Nanga Parbat Mountain.
The Pakistani gov’t allocated the funds and took some other measures after a team of international experts recently assessed the situation and revised its status from 'endangered' to 'vulnerable'.
According to international reports on the animal, the 'vulnerable' classification means the species has under 10,000 breeding animals left, with a population decline of at least 10 percent over three generations.
Today, it is estimated that around 3,500 to 7,000 wild snow leopards exist in the mountain regions of Central Asia, and around 600 to 700 snow leopards in zoos around the world.
A leopard is being poorly treated by locals after it attacked livestock.
It is assessed that only 200 snow leopards exist in the wild in the habitat area of roughly 80,000 square kilometers in the north of Pakistan, where they continue to face threats due to unhealthy weather, poor and less food, and humans.
The usual complaints are that the poachers kill them for their furs, and herders often kill the animals in retaliation for attacks on their livestock.
Ali Nawaz, Pakistan’s foremost expert and conservator of the snow leopard, has been raising voice against keeping the leopard in cages away from nature, and the factors involved in their killing.
"Once you take a wild animal out of nature as an infant, you cannot return it” said Nawaz, adding that the snow leopards, in particular, develop their muscles and strength while learning how to hunt from their mothers in wild at a young age, but a leopard that grows up in captivity develops very differently.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
