To Save a Snow Leopard

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To Save a Snow Leopard: A Special

Afghanistan Mission

By TIM MCGIRK / KABUL Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2010

 

 

ENLARGE PHOTO+

The snow

leopard that was caught by a hunter in Afghanistan and rescued by NATO troops

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In a valley high in the Wakhan

Mountains of Afghanistan, a hunter several weeks ago waded through snowdrifts

to check his traps and found that he had snared one of the rarest creatures

alive: a snow leopard.

If a naturalist had seen the

leopard, he or she would have focused on its snowy fur with black, half-moon

markings and its white goatee. A naturalist would have known that it is a

solitary, elusive creature, a night hunter that roams the icy Central Asian

peaks far above human villages. A naturalist would have known that there are

perhaps less than a thousand of them left on the planet. But the hunter who

snared the snow leopard saw only a $50,000 price tag. That was the fee

supposedly offered by a wealthy Pakistani businessman to any hunter in the

Wakhan who could deliver a snow leopard — alive.See a TIME photoessay on the rare and

endangereed snow leopard in Afghanistan.

The leopard was snarling and

furious at being caught, with its hind leg gashed by a wire snare. But

otherwise, it was in good shape. With the help of a few friends, the hunter

tied the leopard's legs and muzzle, threw it in the back of a truck, and headed

out of the Wakhan Valley to Feyzabad, a three-day journey of hairpin curves

along terrifying mountain roads.

But the capture of a snow

leopard, once believed to be extinct in Afghanistan, didn't stay secret for

long. The feline was to become the object of a four-day rescue operation that

involved NATO forces, the U.S. ambassador in Kabul, a royal prince and even Afghan

President Hamid Karzai. But the mission would end like so many others of

similarly good intentions in Afghanistan.(See 10 species near extinction.)

First, the hunter and his friends

were undone by their own greed. Upon reaching Feyzabad, they thought they might

get a better price for their cat than $50,000 and began to shop around.

" Somebody on the Internet was supposedly offering $2 million for a live snow

leopard, " says Mustapha Zaher, director general of the National

Environmental Protection Agency in Kabul.

But the environmental protection

agency office in Feyzabad was tipped off about the cat. Zaher happens to be a

prince, the grandson of the late Afghan monarch Zaher Shah, and he has far more

clout around Kabul than the ordinary bureaucrat. " I raised a

hullabaloo, " Zaher tells TIME with a grin. He paged through his contacts

book, calling U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, a contingent of German troops

stationed in Feyzabad (who at first were skittish about leaving their base,

even though that region of Afghanistan is relatively calm). And he called the

Afghan President. It had been a hard day for Karzai; suicide bombers and gunmen

had attacked an Indian guesthouse in Kabul, killing dozens. But the President

was sympathetic to the plight of the leopard. " He told me, 'Do what you

can to save him,' " says Zaher.(See the top 10 animal stories of

2009.)

The leopard was confiscated from

the hunters, and Richard Fite, a New Hampshire veterinarian who advises for the

U.S. Agricultural Department in northern Afghanistan, was dispatched to tend

the snow leopard. Fite was more accustomed to dealing with farm animals, and to

encounter a snow leopard was a marvel. " I never imagined in my life that I

would be so close to such a creature, " he says in a telephone interview.

At first, the leopard was kept in a cage at the police station, where it was

poked by curious onlookers.

When Fite examined the leopard,

it had been moved to the atrium of a nearby guesthouse, and its cage was

littered with chunks of uneaten raw meat. The leopard growled at Fite but

remained subdued, he says. When he looked into the eyes of the animal, says

Fite, he could tell it was ailing. " All I could think of was the tragedy

of it all, " he says, adding, " The mental stress on the animal from

capture, transport, being bound and being held for almost a week would have

been unimaginable. "

Over the next three days, Fite

tended to the leopard. Then, after advice from experts at the World

Conservation Society in Kabul, a decision was made to fly the leopard back to

the Wakhan and free it into the wild, once it had regained strength. " We

didn't want it dumped unconscious on a snowfield where it would freeze to

death, " says Dave Lawson, the Society's country director. Bad weather kept

the U.S. helicopter grounded. After what seemed like a day of improved health —

the leopard was holding its head up and grooming itself — and a break in the

storm clouds that would allow the chopper to take off, Fite was optimistic. But

the next morning, on March 2, he was informed that the snow leopard had died.

" My guess — and it is just that — is that it died from shock " he

says, adding, " Snow leopards are solitary, reclusive animals. "

An Afghan elder who had seen the

leopard in the cage wept when he saw its dead body carried out. " A lot of

these mountain people have respect for wildlife, " says Lawson, who was

told by an elder that " God put these animals here for us to look

after. " The death of a snow leopard may not be of great consequence in

Afghanistan's larger turmoil. But for many Afghans, the snow leopard is a

symbol of the country's spirit of untamed wildness. For a few brief moments,

everyone from the President to the top U.S. diplomat in the country turned

their gaze away from politics and terrorism to a shivering, sick cat in a cage.

And when it died, everyone from the highest echelons of power to humble

villagers suffered a profound loss.

— With reporting by Shah Mahmood

Barakzai / Kabul

 

 

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1972402,00.html?artId=1972402?contType=article?chn=world#ixzz0iWsDmYRh