Small wanderer: Not a purrfect day

Mistaking the leopard cub for a domestic cat, a man hit it with a stone when it came looking for food.

GILGIT: An injured snow leopard cub was captured alive in the vicinity of Gilgit on Wednesday.

The cub came in search of food and entered a house in Danyor Valley, about 25 kilometres from Gilgit, two days back and attacked livestock. Assuming it was a domestic cat, the house owner hit the cub with a stone and injured it.

On Wednesday, villagers reported the incident to the wildlife department authorities in Gilgit and handed over the two-month-old cub.



“Its condition is stable though it was hit on the head with a stone,” said the wildlife department’s divisional forest officer (DFO) Aftab Mehmood. “It is under observation and hopefully will be released into the wild soon.”

The snow leopard (Panthera uncia) is an endangered species capable of killing prey three times its weight. This wild cat in the Himalaya and Tibet eats bharal - better known as the Himalayan blue sheep.

“It is our top priority to work for the snow leopards’ conservation,” said the DFO, referring to IUCN Red list of threatened species.

It is believed that climate change, scarcity of food and loss of habitat are some of the key factors pushing snow leopards to prey on domesticated animals, necessitating its conservation.

In Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B), incidents of capturing and injuring of snow leopards have been reported many times in the past as the rivalry between humans and the wild cat continues.

In a coordinated attempt to give a cub a fighting chance for survival, an orphaned snow leopard called  Leo was handed over to Bronx Zoo, New York in 2006, since it was too young to survive on its own in the region.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 16^th, 2014.