Wildlife of Pakistan

[S.U.R.B.]

Flying Fox / Fruit Bat janaab

Exactly.She loves my Jambolan/Jamun tree.

 

[IrbiS]

Exactly.She loves my Jambolan/Jamun tree.

So you are taking active part in saving animals

Check later will post old writing of the same author whose ''A walk on wide side'' is on previous page

 

[IrbiS]

 

[[Bregs]]

oh nice this snow leopard is very shy, rare and highly endangered animal and must be fiercely protected

 

[IrbiS]

Balochistan defends Houbara Bustard hunts by Arab royals
By Hasnaat Malik
Published: August 11, 2015
85SHARES
Share Tweet Email

Houbara Bustard. PHOTO: CREATIVE COMMONS

ISLAMABAD: The Balochistan government on Tuesday defended issuing hunting licenses to Arab royals for hunting Houbara bustards in the province, arguing that there was legal provision to allow hunts under specific guidelines in addition to permits being issued for a small number of birds. It further requested the Supreme Court to allow the practice under a strict code of conduct.

Additional Advocate General Balochistan, while submitting the provincial government’s reply in the apex court on alleged illegal hunting permits issued to Gulf royals, argued that since the Houbara Bustard was a migratory bird, its hunting may be allowed in limited numbers under strict supervision of the provincial forest and wildlife department. It added that petition was devoid of merit and should thus be dismissed.

The Supreme Court is hearing a petition against illegal hunting permits issued to royal visitors from Gulf countries to hunt the rare bird despite a ban.

The petitioner requested the bench to cancel all licences issued for hunting Houbara Bustards, further urging the court to restrain the Foreign Office from issuing such permits to foreigners with strict action against officials who issued the licenses.

Read: K-P govt refuses hunting permits to royalty

The court had sought comprehensive reports from all provincial governments regarding ‘illegal’ issuance of hunting permits to foreign visitors.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government had already submitted its reply in the apex court stating that it had refused a request from the Foreign Office to issue permits to royals.

However, on Tuesday, only the Balochistan government submitted a reply.

The reply added that the provincial government had issued the licenses in view of Economic Coordination Committee (ECC)’s May 2014 decision, which allowed the provincial government to issue permits for hunting 100 birds from November 15 to February 15 with a fee of Rs10 million.

It rejected the petitioner’s claim that 2,200 birds were killed in the season, exceeding the set limit by 2,100 birds.

Read: SC questions hunting permits to royalty

The federal government is signatory of treaties and conventions at international forums and the same complied with the provincial governments, the reply added.

The Balochistan government further argued that according to the Section 10 of the Balochistan Wildlife (protection, preservation, conversation and management) Act 2014, a protected animal meant wild animals included in schedule III of the act. However in part –D of schedule -I in the same Act, a provision exists for hunting of particular species, including the Houbara Bustard.

It was also stated that forest and wildlife department ensured the protection of Houbara Bustards and other birds through vigilance, strict enforcement of law and imposition of heavy penalties including imprisonment for violators.

Additional Attorney General Chaudhry Aamir Rehman had requested the bench to club together all related petitions, noting that the federal government had not issued any hunting permit after verdicts of Balochistan High Court and Sindh High Courts.

Read: Where there is Houbara Bustard, there is money

The bench had clubbed all the petitions including a plea of an individual against BHC’s November 2014 order, wherein the hunting of Houbara Bustrad was declared illegal.

Meanwhile, another petitioner contended before the Supreme Court that hunting by Arab royals was favourable for the people of the area as dignitaries coming for the purpose not only established ‘certain beneficial projects’ but also paid millions in hunting fees.

It argued that the because of the Balochistan High Court’s verdict, the government was facing a loss.

The hearing of case was adjourned until Wednesday.

Areas allocated for hunting

According to a Foreign Office circular, areas were being allocated in four provinces for eleven dignitaries from Qatar.

They would have hunted in Khushab, Jhang, Bhakkar, Bahawalnagar and Layyah in Punjab; Jacobabad, in Sindh; Turbat, Loralai Muskhel, Mushkel Kalat and Jhal Magsi in Balochistan.

 

[ghazi52]

..............................
.....
For Saudis and Pakistan, a Bird of Contention

Pakistanis last year in Baluchistan Province with their catch of houbara bustard. Foreign hunting permits have been canceled. CreditTalha Ali

• Pakistan in pursuit of the houbara bustard — a waddling, migratory bird whose meat, they believe, contains aphrodisiac powers.
  
  Little expense is spared for the elaborate winter hunts. Cargo planes fly tents and luxury jeeps into custom-built desert airstrips, followed by private jets carrying the kings and princes of Persian Gulf countries along with their precious charges: expensive hunting falcons that are used to kill the white-plumed houbara.
  
  This year’s hunt, however, has run into difficulty.
  
  It started in November, when the High Court in Baluchistan, the vast and tumultuous Pakistani province that is a favored hunting ground, canceled all foreign hunting permits in response to complaints from conservationists.
  
  Those experts say the houbara’s habitat, and perhaps the long-term survival of the species, which is already considered threatened, has been endangered by the ferocious pace of hunting.
  
  That legal order ballooned into a minor political crisis last week when a senior Saudi prince and his entourage landed in Baluchistan, attracting unusually critical media attention and a legal battle that is scheduled to reach the country’s Supreme Court in the coming days.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Anger among conservationists was heightened by the fact that the prince — Fahd bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the governor of Tabuk province — along with his entourage had killed 2,100 houbara over 21 days during last year’s hunt, according to an official report leaked to the Pakistani news media, or about 20 times more than his allocated quota.
  
  Still, Prince Fahd faced little censure when he touched down in Dalbandin, a dusty town near the Afghan border on Wednesday, to be welcomed by a delegation led by a cabinet minister and including senior provincial officials.
  
  His reception was a testament, critics say, to the money-driven magnetism of Saudi influence in Pakistan, and the walk-on role of the humble bustard in cementing that relationship.
  
  “This is a clear admission of servility to the rich Arabs,” said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physics professor and longtime critic of what he calls “Saudization” in Pakistan. “They come here, hunt with impunity, and are given police protection in spite of the fact that they are violating local laws.”
  
  
• http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/world/for-saudis-and-pakistan-a-bird-of-contention.html?_r=0

...

 

[ghazi52]

........................ . . . . . .....................................................
Vulture conservation project launched amid rapid decline in bird’s population

A FLOCK of vultures feed on an animal carcass in a Nagarparkar village.

KARACHI: A project to protect and conserve vulture population was launched on Monday in the Nagarparkar area of Tharparkar district at a ceremony held at the office of a non-governmental organisation.

The two NGOs collaborating in the project are the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Baanhn Beli.

“The principal reason for the rapid and alarming decline in the vulture population is the use of a pain-killer, diclofenac, normally administered to livestock, that also increases the recipient’s weight and milk producing capacity,” they said.

The drug, they said, had proved to be fatal for the internal organs of vultures, that scavenged on animal carcasses.

“A similar decline in vulture population has been seen in India, Nepal and several countries in Africa. In 2006, the Pakistan government had banned production and use of veterinary medicines containing diclofenac to save vulture population in this country but unauthorised human use of the drug continues, posing an abiding threat to this remarkable species,” said Nadeem Mirbahar representing the IUCN at the ceremony.

He informed the audience that the IUCN had set up its Asia regional steering committee on vultures in 2012 and the ministry of climate change also notified its national vulture recovery committee in the same year to ensure better IUCN-govt coordination for vulture conservation at the national level.

The adverse effects of the decline in vulture population had already been known, he said, adding that some of them were contamination of soil and water, infection in other animal species and human beings, increase in the number of feral dogs that fed on the dead animals and threaten human beings with infection.

Mr Mirbahar underlined the need for creating awareness of the bird’s importance that was usually looked down upon as an ugly, dirty and smelly creature.

Speaking on similar lines, Baanhn Beli president Dr Shankar Lal said that the bird had become a highly endangered species in Pakistan in recent years. Concerted efforts at the local, provincial, national and regional levels were required to prepare and implement an effective strategy for its protection and conservation, he stressed.

“Serving as a unique scavenger bird for 50 million years, the bird cleans the landscape from dead or rotting carcasses and is a vital link in the web of nature and ecosystems,” he observed.

According to him, the vulture population in Pakistan has steeply declined over the past two decades. Nagarparkar taluka is one of only two or three areas in the country where small colonies of vultures exist.

Over 200 residents of villages in Nagarparkar taluka participated in the launching ceremony, which was also attended by volunteer-leaders of Baanhn Beli and officials of the wildlife and forest departments as well as the local administration.

....................................

 

[New Resolve]

Unless hunting is strictly regulated, poaching checked and wildlife reserves created all is lost. Over population is another threat to wildlife areas.

 

[LeslieEngel]

Nice post. Thanks for the share.

 

[IrbiS]

Falconry: the demonisation of a noble art
ByKamran Khan YousafZai
Published: November 2, 2015
0SHARES
SHARETWEETEMAIL


The writer is president of the Pakistan Falconry Association, officer of the Sub-Continent International Association for Falconry and Conservation Birds of Prey, and a member of the IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management

It seems that it is our national pastime to trivialise things.Falconry, prized as a noble art and a great field sport during Mughal rule, has received bad publicity in recent times. The government’s petition in the Supreme Court seeking to lift the ban onhoubara bustardhunting has sparked much controversy. It remains to be seen whether the apex Court rescinds its previous decision or not, but that there’s general lack of public awareness about the whole issue is evident.

To start with, hawks, eagles and falcons have been used in falconry since times immemorial. Falconry is the art of catching quarry with trained species of the falcon in a sustainable manner. During the period when the use of pesticides, such as DDT, caused a considerable decrease in the peregrine population, falconers in the West developed techniques for domestic breeding of falcons to reintroduce them to the wild. Needless to say, the peregrine was saved from its near-extinction. The same techniques that were used to rescue it from extinction were also used in the case of the Californian Condor, the Mauritius kestrel and now, vultures.

Due to their remarkable qualities of speed and power, falcons have routinely been alluded to in literary works. Every time there’s a cricket match, for instance, we’d call our national players ‘shaheens’. The works of Allama Iqbal revolve around the majestic attributes of the shaheen. The same is true of the great Pashto poet, Khushal Khan Khattak, who was a professional falconer.

So why all the recent fuss on falconry? Where did things go wrong? Well, it all started with one unfortunate incident in January last year, when some 2,100 houbara bustards were allegedly killed by a Saudi dignitary in Chagai, Balochistan. The incident received widespread coverage in the local and international media and there was an outcry against the way hunting permits were issued by the government to falconers from the Middle East.

No sane person can justify a killing spree of that magnitude, perpetrated in a span of three weeks. Few, however, have bothered to ask about the modus operandi adhered to on the occasion. Even professional ornithologists and conservationists have for some reason overlooked the matter. Anyone, who has the slightest idea about the way falconry is practiced in the field, would instantly point out that it’s simply impossible to hunt that many game-birds with a handful of saker falcons. The whole episode, in fact, is a classic example of misinformation.

Falconry is a natural and sustainable form of hunting. It has been recognised by Unesco as the “intangible cultural heritage of humankind”. As far as the conservation of the houbara bustard is concerned, the raison d’etre of the Supreme Court verdict, all is not lost. Few people in Pakistan know that this year 600 adult houbaras were released in the Lal Suhanra National Park by the UAE-based International Fund for Houbara Conservation (IFHC). It was part of a bigger programme involving 6,000 houbaras, to be released in different countries. Using artificial insemination, well over 45,000 North African and MacQueen’s bustards hatched by the IFHC in its UAE, Morocco and Kazakhstan centres last year, were released into the wild.

Numerous falcon release programmes have been carried out in Pakistan during the past few decades by the same people from the Middle East, who are constantly being lambasted for their passion for falconry. Thanks to the efforts of such conservation programmes and breeding facilities, the houbara is no more an endangered species, as is usually claimed. Its population has been stable since 2004 and is growing steadily according to respected global organisations such as the IUCN and the WWF.

That the houbara is hunted by falconers for its aphrodisiac quality is an outright lie of cosmological scale. The ignorance of people in South Asia with respect to nature and its conservation is shocking. Last year, when security forces in Afghanistan shot a GPS-fitted houbara, it was instantly called a spy agent and people proudly posed for pictures with the poor creature. The fact of the matter was that the bird belonged to an IFHC research programme to track and monitor the bird’s migration pattern.

What’s needed is less emotionalism and politicisation of issues and a more dispassionate discourse. There’s a need for proper legislation and streamlining of the entire canon of wildlife rules and regulations, to curtail problems of smuggling, poaching and violation of law. Like Pakistan and the Middle East, the UK also has a long tradition of falconry and is home to well over 15,000 falconers. Due to the strict implementation of wildlife laws and state vigil, however, the falconer community there practices this millennia-old tradition in a balanced and nature-friendly way. Our state and its organs need to evolve such a mechanism as well.


Published in The Express Tribune, November 3rd, 2015.

 

[Manidabest]

Join WWF Pakistan and spread awareness among Pakistanis about wildlife please WWF-Pakistan

The common leopard is protected under all provincial laws, is typically associated with the moist temperate forest with mixed deciduous and coniferous forests. Historically, four subspecies of the leopard have been listed in the mammals of Pakistan. However, it is difficult to differentiate between the subspecies as the leopards are restricted to the northern Pakistan and other areas have occasional reports on vagrant leopards.

Habitat
In Pakistan, it is concentrated in the Moist Temperate forest and important areas of the distribution are from Margalla Hills National Park, Murree Reserve Forest, Ayubia National Park (KP) and adjoining forest of Khyber-Paktunkhwa and Azad Jammu and Kashmir and there are also occasional reports from desert areas of Punjab which largely show a vagrant animal.

- See more at: Common Leopard

 

[krash]

Join WWF Pakistan and spread awareness among Pakistanis about wildlife please WWF-Pakistan

The common leopard is protected under all provincial laws, is typically associated with the moist temperate forest with mixed deciduous and coniferous forests. Historically, four subspecies of the leopard have been listed in the mammals of Pakistan. However, it is difficult to differentiate between the subspecies as the leopards are restricted to the northern Pakistan and other areas have occasional reports on vagrant leopards.

Habitat
In Pakistan, it is concentrated in the Moist Temperate forest and important areas of the distribution are from Margalla Hills National Park, Murree Reserve Forest, Ayubia National Park (KP) and adjoining forest of Khyber-Paktunkhwa and Azad Jammu and Kashmir and there are also occasional reports from desert areas of Punjab which largely show a vagrant animal.

- See more at: Common Leopard

There are pockets of population in Balochistan as well.

 

[Manidabest]

There are pockets of population in Balochistan as well.

oh yess they are mostly persian leopards species.... they should be protected .... few sardars have them in private ....

Indus river dolphins

The Indus River dolphin, locally known as bhulan is a freshwater dwelling cetacean species found in the Indus River, Pakistan. It is a flagship species and is an indicator of the biological health of aquatic and terrestrial environment adjoining the Indus River. The current distribution range of the Indus River dolphin is about 1000 km stretch of the Indus River which includes main Indus channel and active channels connected to it between Jinnah and Kotri barrages.

The existing population of Indus River dolphin is about 1300 dolphins found between Chashma and Kotri barrages in the Indus River.
The government of Sindh designated a 200 km stretch of the Indus River between Guddu and Sukkur barrages as the ‘Indus Dolphin Reserve’ in 1974. It is a legally Protected Area holding the largest population of Indus River dolphin. It is also an important bird area and an internationally recognised Ramsar site.

The Indus River dolphin is characterized by a long beak, rounded belly, stocky body, very small dorsal fin and large flippers. This species is also referred to as the ‘blind dolphin’ as its eye hasn't developed a lens. It relies on echolocation (sound sensors) to find fish, shrimp, and other prey in the bottom mud.

The Indus River dolphin swims on its side, at times enabling it to move in water as shallow as 30 cm. As it swims on its side, it trails a flipper along the bottom of the river. After 30 to 60 seconds, when it needs to breathe, it swims to the surface, rotates upright to take in the air, and then rotates 90 degrees again as it swims back to the bottom. It migrates upstream into the smaller tributaries during the monsoon rains and migrates downstream to the main channels in the dry season.

The Indus River Dolphin is blind but it can still differentiate between light and dark!


The side swimming behaviour of Indus River Dolphin is not consistently seen in any other dolphin, except the Ganges River Dolphin. - See more at: The Indus River Dolphin (Platanista minor)

 

[ghazi52]

.....................................................
SC lifts ban on houbara bustard hunting

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Friday lifted the ban on hunting of tiloor, an indigenous game bird also known as houbara bustard.

While reviewing its last year’s judgement, a five-judge bench of the apex court headed by Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali announced its judgment over the federal and provincial governments review petitions against the court’s verdict on the ban on houbara bustard hunting.

However, one of the judges Justice Qazi Faez Isa while writing a dissenting note opposed the court’s decision to conditionally allow hunting of houbara bustard.

But the federal and provincial governments asked the court to review the decision, claiming that controlled hunting was a tool for preservation and should be allowed.

Wealthy hunting parties from the Gulf travel to Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province every winter to kill the houbara bustard using hunting falcons.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature includes the bird on its “red list” of threatened species, estimating there are fewer than 97,000 left globally.

The issue has also cast a spotlight on traditionally close ties between Pakistan and its allies in the Arab world, particularly Saudi Arabia.

Balochistan High Court in November 2014 cancelled all permits for hunting in the province, but the federal government headed by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif — a close ally of Saudi Arabia — continued to issue licenses.

In a judgement issued Friday, the court said it had set aside its original decision to ban hunting of the bird and that petitions on the issue would be listed for fresh hearings.

Sharif, along with powerful military chief General Raheel Sharif, visited Riyadh earlier this week in what his office said was an effort to ease tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Pakistan has deep military connections with Saudi Arabia and it has long benefited from the oil-rich kingdom’s largesse.

The prime minister has close personal ties with the Saudi royal family, who sheltered him during years in exile.

Justice Mian Saqib Nisar has authored the main judgment wherein he set aside the three judge bench’s August 19 verdict regarding the ban on hunting. Three judges, including the chief justice, endorsed his judgment.

In August, the court imposed a ban on the hunting of endangered birds and ordered the cancelation of all existing permits issued by the government.

By removing the ban on hunting, SC upheld the government’s request to lift the ban, while quashing Balochistan High Court’s decision.

Earlier this month, the top court reserved its judgment over the federal and three provincial governments’ review petitions against the ban on hunting of tiloor.

The Supreme Court’s three-judge bench, headed by former chief justice Justice Jawad S Khawaja on August 19, put a complete ban on the hunting of the bird. Later, several petitioners – including federal, Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan governments – filed review petitions in the apex court.

On January 5, Chief Justice Jamali formed a five-judge larger bench also including Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, Justice Iqbal Hameed Ur Rehman, Justice Umar Ata Bandial and Justice Qazi Faez Isa to hear the review petitions.

......

 

[ghazi52]