Faizabad: A conservation group said on Sunday that Afghan authorities had captured a rare snow leopard in the country’s mountainous northeast and were getting ready to release it back into the wild after it had allegedly killed dozens of livestock animals.
The deputy governor of the district, Abdulrahman Kasra, told AFP on Saturday that the endangered leopard was apprehended on Thursday night after getting stuck in a livestock enclosure in the rural Zibak district of Badakhshan province, savaging about thirty animals.
He said the young leopard was being held at the governor’s compound in the provincial capital of Faizabad.
The head of the Wildlife Conservation Society office in Badakhshan said a veterinarian had treated a minor injury to the big cat’s leg and that it would be released back into the wild.
“The authorities have promised us they will release the leopard back to the Zibak district soon,” Khorosh Sahel told AFP.
The mountainous northeast of Afghanistan is one of the few habitats of the elusive leopards, dubbed the “ghosts of the mountains”.
They are listed as “vulnerable” species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with numbers decreasing due to climate change impacts, habitat loss and poaching.
Warmer weather can cause tree lines to rise and farmers to move farther up mountains to plant crops and graze livestock, intruding on snow leopard territory, according to experts.
A snow leopard in Badakhshan is said to have killed about 40 livestock animals in a similar incident that occurred the previous year.
The farmer who lost his only source of income on Thursday claimed that he had applied for government assistance after his animals were killed.
“The animals were the only asset I had to support my family,” Ganji Baig said.
Other Zibak residents told AFP they wanted authorities to follow through with the plan to release the leopard.
