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Counting sheep to save the mountain monarchs of Pamirs
At the 2006 International Workshop on Wildlife and Habitat Conservation in the Pamirs Plateau held in Urumqi in late September, international conservationists and experts from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and China discussed issues each country faces in managing the Pamirs.
Director of the Institute of Zoology of Tajikistan Abdusator Saidov said about 70,000 Marco Polo sheep wandered in the wilderness of the country in the 1960s. The population was estimated to have decreased to between 10,000 and 12,000 individuals in 1983.
Dr George B Schaller launched a detailed survey of the population in Tajikistan in 2003. He estimated that about 10,000 Marco Polo sheep live in the country.
The preeminent field biologist believes the main threat to these wild "mountain monarchs" is unsustainable hunting "by local people, officials, military personnel and anyone else with a gun." Saidov explained that poaching is caused mostly by poverty and weak management of protected areas.
"We have only three rangers working in our protected areas in the Pamirs," said Mirassanov Marodmamad, a conservation expert from Tajikistan. "To reach our protected area from our capital, you have to catch the airplane to the regional centre and drive another 300 kilometres to the base of our reserve."
Schaller and his Chinese colleagues launched a 29-day survey of the Marco Polo sheep in the Chinese Pamirs at the end of 2005. He estimated that a minimum of 2,000 animals live in the country during the season when the survey was conducted.
Chinese participants of the workshop said that overgrazing, fencing on the rangelands and borders, mining, road construction and rapid development of mass tourism are major threats to the sheep and other wildlife living in the region.
In a survey launched in August of 2005, Gong Minghao, a researcher with the Academy of Forest Inventory and Planning of the State Forestry Administration, found that overgrazing was quite serious in the Taxkorgan Nature Reserve the country's only reserve focused on the conservation of Marco Polo sheep.
In the reserve, which covers 15,863 square kilometres, the distribution area of the sheep is 4,547 square kilometres. Here, Marco Polo sheep have to share rangelands with other wildlife as well as more than 23,000 livestock animals owned by 4,000 people living within the reserve.
"The overgrazing of livestock has certain negative impacts on the development of the argali population in the reserve," Gong said.
Schaller saw more than 600 Marco Polo sheep in Afghanistan in 2004, and he said that "it is a minimum estimate, since one always overlooks animals."
Having endured nearly a quarter century of warfare, Afghanistan certainly faces more problems in conservation than the other three countries. Poverty, opium use, poaching, lack of infrastructure, corruption of local officials, debates about land ownership, overgrazing and insufficient conservation data are the biggest hurdles the country must overcome.
However, the Afghani Government's determination and commitment to conservation is impressive.
The National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) of Afghanistan, which has been running for one year, just drafted the Environment Act one of the most important conservation laws in Afghanistan's history, according to Mostapha Zaher. Currently, 430 people are working with the expanding agency, he said.
He added that NEPA, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Afghanistan branch of WCS recently built a work-station in the Wakhan Corridor, which borders China on the Pamir Plateau. From this base, conservationists have already started work
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