Injured snow leopard dies in Peshawar

PESHAWAR:

A rare snow leopard which had been shifted to Peshawar Zoo for treatment in badly injured condition succumbed to its wounds on Monday.

An official of the Wildlife Department said that the backbone of the leopard was fractured after a fall from a cliff in Rabbat, Chitral. It was unable to move and was found by locals who informed the village reservation committee. The latter called the Wildlife teams for its rescue who shifted it from the difficult mountainous village to Chitral.

“The animal was rescued and shifted to Chitral city for treatment but in the absence of treatment facilities the leopard was shifted to Peshawar Zoo. Sadly, the city menagerie too had no such facilities available,” he said.

“This leopard was paralyzed and it could not move its back legs and from the day one we had no hope for its survival,” said the official, adding that due to the absence of treatment facilities the poor animal died helplessly.

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“This was a very beautiful young male leopard. It reached the village in the hope of finding food due to the scarcity of the animals in the wild due to heavy snow and there it was badly injured after falling from the cliff,” he said, adding that it was unfortunate that the rare snow leopard could not be saved due to the lack of treatment facilities.

“Markhors and even jackals are found injured in the area and still there is no world-class veterinary hospital in Chitral to treat these magnificent animals,” he said, adding that government should pay attention towards removing this deficiency as soon as possible.

Peshawar Zoo is also notorious for the deaths of large number of rare animals there and after the death of injured snow leopard social media activists are now demanding of the government to establish a well-equipped veterinary hospital to treat these animals in Chitral locally.

“Snow leopards are very rare in Pakistan and even then we cannot protect them for lack of world class animal hospitals,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 2^nd, 2021.