5. How did what happened to the panther in Islamabad affect what happened to the snow leopard in Chitral?
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:“They saved nine of my goats in lieu of only one,” said Gul Ashraf of Kuju village as satisfaction radiated from his face while talking about the conservation project of snow leopard launched by the Snow Leopard Foundation (SLF).
“The project has brought about a big change in our attitude towards the wild cat and our hostile attitude has been replaced by friendly feelings; no sane person could think of shooting the animal even if it carries onslaught against their herd of goats,” he said. The human-snow leopard conflict has been quite frequent in the past while the density of the cat population is thought to be much higher than now which can be substantiated by the fact that it forms an integral part of local culture.
The folk tales and songs are replete with the description of the wild cat while the people name their children after it as Purdoom (snow leopard) even now which indicates the intimate relation between the two. Before the arrival of automatic rifles with long firing range here the villagers warded off the cat with clubs when it would attack their goats in the pasture and even in villages. The modern rifles, however, subdued the cat leading to the fast depletion of its population over the past few decades and it filled the conservationists with high degree of apprehension about its very survival. The cat was, in the meanwhile, put in the list of endangered species heading towards extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The area now forming the Chitral Gol National Park is said to be one of the famous habitat of the cat since the olden times and a pair of the animal with cubs made their presence every time at the low altitude in the vicinity of villages, says Dr Inayatullah Faizi, a former project manager of IUCN. The other places of its presence were Gahirait Gol, Broze Gol, Koghuzi, Kuju, Agram Gol, Shasha and Kalash valley of Rumbur which supported a large population of the markhor and ibex, both considered the favourite food of the cat, he says. It was in 1980s that Schaller, a renowned conservationist, told the world about his sighting of the animal in Chitral Gol area after its mysterious disappearance from the area for over a decade, he said. The depletion of markhor population due to unchecked poaching had in turn made the wild cat an endangered species, Dr Faizi said.