Markhor the National Animal of Pakistan

[Ahmad]

No but it can kill snake
It eats grass , leaves etc just like goat

mmmmm then its name should be Markush.

 

[KS]

We would have chosen snow leapord in Pakistan IF they are present in Pakistan.

They are present in ur Northern Areas ...unless u consider NA not to a part of Pakistan.....

 

[Comet]

Markhor is one hell of a beautiful animal. I have seen it in Quetta and Ziarat. It really powerful, jumps from high cliffs.

 

[sparklingway]

why did we choose this animal?? out of all the things!! i doubt any pakistani has seen it

We would have chosen snow leapord in Pakistan IF they are present in Pakistan.

I always thought the snowleopard was present in Pakistan.
One of the most majestic and beautiful creatures on earth

The majority of the existing population of Snow Leopards in the wild is in the Karakorums. The only ever instance of a Snow Leopard captured on video in the wild in action was broadcasted in the first episode of the awesome BBC Series "Earth".

Sadly, two Snow Leopards have been donated over the years to Marghazar Zoo , Islamabad for limited viewing and not having the necessary finances to set up a temperature controlled cage for this sensitive animal, one suffered from dehydration and was sent back while the other one suffered from multiple diseases as well.

Snow Leopards are in conservation in the Khunjerab National Park and the Central Karakoram National Park.

Here is the WWF Snow Leopard Page :- http://www.wwfpak.org/snowleapord_project.php

oh well if we have chosen MARKHOOR then atleast we should protect it from extinction!!! just 2500 left!!!!!! we have a rich culture history & yet in pakistan no one cares!!!!

Markhors aren't on the decline. In fact conservation efforts have increased their population and illegal hunting has been controlled.

The NWFP Wildlife Dept has over the years issued very rare licenses for Markhor Hunting. Licenses for hunting 1 Markor were sold between 81,000 USD and 58,000 USD each in the Toshi Game Reserve and the Gairath Reserve in Chitral and once in the Kaigah Reserve in Kohistan as well.

 

[Comet]

This is the best video I ever found on Internet

 

[Areesh]

Snow Leopard is present in Pakistan in the Norther Areas.

One of the reason the insignia of the FCNA is the Snow Leopard as we have them and even Nat Geo have made documentaries in Pakistan about this beautiful animal.

Strange many Pakistanis even don't know this fact.

The majority of the existing population of Snow Leopards in the wild is in the Karakorums. The only ever instance of a Snow Leopard captured on video in the wild in action was broadcasted in the first episode of the awesome BBC Series "Earth".

Sadly, two Snow Leopards have been donated over the years to Marghazar Zoo , Islamabad for limited viewing and not having the necessary finances to set up a temperature controlled cage for this sensitive animal, one suffered from dehydration and was sent back while the other one suffered from multiple diseases as well.

Snow Leopards are in conservation in the Khunjerab National Park and the Central Karakoram National Park.

Here is the WWF Snow Leopard Page :- snowleapord_project



Markhors aren't on the decline. In fact conservation efforts have increased their population and illegal hunting has been controlled.

The NWFP Wildlife Dept has over the years issued very rare licenses for Markhor Hunting. Licenses for hunting 1 Markor were sold between 81,000 USD and 58,000 USD each in the Toshi Game Reserve and the Gairath Reserve in Chitral and once in the Kaigah Reserve in Kohistan as well.

Oh my bad. Anyways it was my ignorance I really didn't know about it. Thanks for all this valuable info. Can any one of you tell me how many snow leopards we have right now in our northern areas. What is their population?

They are present in ur Northern Areas ...unless u consider NA not to a part of Pakistan.....

Well you have one more reason to be frustrated about so called Pakistan occupied areas.

 

[BATMAN]

Hi, i don't care much if some animal exist in Pakistan or not but some people hate Pakistan so much that, if some one associate a simple animal or natureal reserve etc. to Pakistan, it hurts them to the level where it disturb their peace to unbelieveable heights...

I wonder how much other positive development or news from Pakistan, may hurt them!!!!!!!
I pray to god, such keep such persons away from Pakistan.

I found following article on Snow leopard:

Collar 'key' to snow leopard secrets

By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News

Snow leopard captured on BBC wildlife film

BBC News Player - Snow leopard captured on film

Lying somewhere in the mountainous, snow-cloaked terrain of Pakistan's Tooshi Game Reserve is a collar that could help unlock the secrets of the elusive snow leopard.
For the past year, this piece of hi-tech equipment has sat around the neck of a wild snow leopard, recording, via the global positioning system (GPS), almost every step of her travels as she roamed the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

And now the collar has dropped off - as it was programmed to - the hunt is under way to retrieve it and for the first time shed light on the secretive animal's movements.

For Tom McCarthy, science and conservation director of the Snow Leopard Trust, getting hold of the collar is especially important thanks to some of the technical difficulties that the project has faced over the last 14 months.

In November 2006, he and his team captured a 35kg (75lb) female snow leopard - who they named Bayad-e-Kohsaar (Urdu for In Memory of the Mountains) - in the Chitral Gol National Park in Pakistan and fitted the satellite collar.

SNOW LEOPARDS
Between 3,500-7,000 snow leopards estimated in wild
Live in high, rugged mountains of central Asia
Shy, elusive and solitary animals
Home-range is unknown
In captivity, live up to 21 years
Adults weigh between 35-55kg, and stand about 60cm tall
Pale dense fur covered in unique dark spots for camouflage
Female snow leopards mate every other year
Usually 2-3 cubs born in litter
Snow leopard family
It was the same cat that featured in the BBC's Planet Earth and more recent Natural World documentaries.

The team had planned for the collar to send a burst of Bayad's GPS location coordinates every two weeks, through uplinks to the Argos satellite system, so that they could study the collared cat's latest movements.

But a fog of background radio noise over central Asia has meant that it has had problems "talking" to the Argos satellites and the bulk of the GPS data has remained stored on the collar.

Dr McCarthy explained: "The power of the collar comes so close to breaking through that background noise, just not quite and not very often."

Technical tests on the collar carried out with a captive snow leopard in the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle revealed that the collar had no problems uplinking to Argos outside of Asia.

The researcher added: "Through China and down to where Bayad is, it is definitely a background noise problem."

However, the team did not have to suffer total-satellite silence.

In May, a signal managed to break through, sending GPS data that revealed Bayad had moved from Pakistan to Afghanistan; in July, another uplink confirmed she had travelled to a slightly different spot in Afghanistan.

Dr McCarthy told the BBC News website: "All we are getting now is a few little blips that tell us over summer she is out in the mountains of Afghanistan, but when we see the full set of data off that collar, what it shows us could be incredible."

Unanswered questions

He estimates that the collar could hold between 500 and 1,000 GPS location coordinates, which when analysed could shed light on the behaviour of an animal that is notoriously difficult to study.

He explained: "It will not only show us her range, but it will show us how far she moved in any 8-hour period or over the course of a month, the longest single trip that she did, how long on average she sat at a kill site, or whether she got close to humans during her travels."

1: Nov 2006 - Bayad's collar fitted
2: May/July 2007- GPS uplinks reveal move to Afghanistan
3: Jan 2008 - collarless Bayad sighted in Pakistan
Recent sightings of a collarless Bayad have revealed she has now returned to Pakistan, close to where she was initially tagged, for winter; a signal from her collar shows that it can be found nearby, lying somewhere in the rocky landscape.

Dr McCarthy said: "I'm not surprised that she came back to exactly where she was last year; the BBC film crew filmed her in the same site three years in a row, so we expected her to come back.

"We even knew which day to expect her, and sure enough that was right when she turned up."

Because of political unrest following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Tom McCarthy has been advised against travelling to this region, so a local team are now trying to locate and retrieve the collar using VHF radio-tracking.

But heavy snowfall has so far scuppered their efforts and they are now waiting for the conditions to improve.

Loss of a friend

For the Snow Leopard Trust the challenge of finding the collar has gained even more significance following the news that wildlife biologist Eric York, one of the scientists involved in the tagging project, had died unexpectedly in November.

He had caught pneumonic plague following an autopsy on a mountain lion that had probably died of the same disease a week earlier in Grand Canyon Park, US.


Dr McCarthy said: "Eric was an incredible person and he had worked on so many collaring programmes and was such an asset to all of us.

"He has been a friend of mine for many years so to have this come out of the blue - one day he's with you one day he's gone - it was just a tremendous loss for all of us."

The team remain confident that they will find the collar and that the information it holds will help with the conservation efforts for this endangered cat.

Dr McCarthy told the BBC: "There are just so many basic ecological questions that you need to answer if you are going to try to design a good sound conservation programme that we don't have and the only way to get it right now is through collars.

He added: "We have also pioneered less invasive methods to learn all we can about these cats, such as automated cameras and using genetics, but certain questions are impossible to answer any other way than through collaring.

"We will soon have those answers when the collar is retrieved - if it just quits snowing!"

 

[Black Stone]

The horns are highly collectible.

 

[Super Falcon]

Incredible pakistan and animal it is unfortunate through corruption we have not relized what we have in our country and we have not cared them

 

[sparklingway]

The horns are highly collectible.

This hunting season bring in at least a hundred grand for the bid as last time the highest bid for the most densely populated reserve (therefore the easiest catch relatively) was sold for 81,000 USD for a single Markhor.

 

[Super Falcon]

offffff man its alot oh my GOD

 

[BATMAN]

They are present in ur Northern Areas ...unless u consider NA not to a part of Pakistan.....

Since those people who objected for associating snow leopard to Pakistan did not bothered to chanllenge your baseless map.... a classic case of usual misinformation and yet false but ...towering claims.

How many Snow leopards are counted or spotted in India?

 

[Archie]

never thought that people would discuss a glorified goat on PDF

 

[Comet]

This one is also a beautiful Bird found in Pakistan



Its called chakor

 

[Hasnain2009]