PESHAWAR: Five men were sentenced to prison in an expedited trial on Wednesday for killing a snow leopard in northern Pakistan, wildlife officials confirmed.
Four poachers and their facilitator were arrested by the Gilgit-Baltistan Wildlife Department on charges of killing a female leopard near the Hoper glacier in the region’s Nagar district in late July. The hunters uploaded their photos with the body of the endangered cat to social media, after which they were traced by the authorities.
“Informers told us that in the Hopar Nagar area someone shot the precious snow leopard. The concerned wildlife officials alerted local police and we arrested the illegal hunters and seized the leopard’s dead body,” Gilgit-Baltistan Wildlife Department spokesman Tariq Husain told Arab News on Thursday.
Divisional Forest Officer Jibran Haider, who has magistrate powers, convicted the accused in an expedited trial. Two were sentenced to two years in jail, two to one year’s imprisonment and their facilitator to one month behind bars, he said.
Only 300 snow leopards are believed to be left in the wild in Pakistan.
The photograph posted on social media, in which a poacher poses with a dead snow leopard, helped Gilgit-Baltistan authorities identify the men who killed the endangered cat in Nagar district last month. (Social media)
“There are about 300 snow leopards in Pakistan’s Himalayan, Hindukush and Karakoram regions,” Snow Leopard Foundation deputy director Jaffarudin said.
However, not only poachers pose a danger to the wild feline.
The foundation has been working on improving the socio-economic conditions of mountain communities in Gilgit Baltistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir which share the ecosystem with the endangered species.
Snow leopards often attack livestock and local residents sometimes kill them in defense.
“Leopards attack our kids and women too, they say, and that’s why they kill this precious animal,” Husain of the wildlife department said, adding that when it comes to actual poachers the department is on alert and several arrests have taken place in the recent past.
Activists lauded the recent arrest but say that law enforcement is still insufficient as local authorities do not have proper surveillance tools.
“No doubt the wildlife department is facing problems as they can’t cover the whole area,” wildlife activist Mumtaz Gohar said, “If the hunter had not posted the photos on social media, the incident would definitely have gone unreported like many others.”
