By Bianca Rosen Four-year-old Aruke Atabaev has plump cheeks that devour her face and a smile that makes the toughest of soldiers fall to their knees. She helps her mother—Jamila, wife of Mahan Atabaev who is the leader of a community-based wildlife conservancy in the Eastern Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan—set and clear dining tables, always…
It’s 5 p.m., and the sun’s last rays cast a golden glow on an empty road in the eastern Pamirs of Tajikistan. This route was once the Silk Road plied by merchants, nomads, and pilgrims and later by British and Russian soldiers and agents engaged in the territorial contest between Britain and Russia known as…
I am looking at these two sketches in my notebook, that a Turkmen horse breeder called Murat is drawing infront of me: one is of a large cat with big spots and short legs, the other one is of a sleek cat with a long tale. One is a leopard. I look at the…
The fall of 2014 was difficult: an unpleasant incident occurred that however created an opportunity to tackle crossborder illegal trafficking in wildlife in Central Asia in an innovative way. Intelligence from our informant network pointed to illegal trophy hunts in Tajik National Park and trophies illegally exported from Tajikistan into Kyrgyzstan and onwards to Russia…
In honor of International Snow Leopard Day, I wanted to share the story of one snow leopard in particular, Shirin, and her incredible journey. Last winter, I received one of those phone calls that never fail to make me tear up: a snow leopard had been illegally captured and sold in the eastern Pamirs of…
World Wildlife Day is fast approaching (3 March) and this year’s theme is the “The future of wildlife is in our hands”. This brings on a reflection that without the support of local people and communities that share the habitat with snow leopards and their prey, the future of snow leopards would be a gloomy…
It’s night-time in the remote and rugged Pamir mountains of Tajikistan. A snow leopard I am going to call “Bars” is walking below a cliff wall she already passed many times this month. There are interesting scents on this trail and scrapes left by other cats. She sees a new man-made rock wall forcing…
A snow leopard couple in the Darvaz range of Tajikistan celebrated Valentine Day and the arrival of the Chinese Year of the Sheep/Goat by feasting on a very special goat, the markhor. 2015, declared at the 2013 Global Snow Leopard Conservation Forum, as the Year of the Snow Leopard, promises to be a good…
The last few months have been busy for team Panthera in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. On a hopeful note – repeat snow leopard camera trap surveys in the Alichur in the eastern Pamirs have shown a small yet promising increase in snow leopards using the protected conservancy grounds. More predator-proof corrals have been built in the eastern…
Panthera recently teamed up for conserving snow leopards in Kyrgyzstan with the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic and the National Center for Mountain Regions Development (NCMRD), the working body of the Special Representative of the President of the Kyrgyz Republic on the sustainable development of mountain regions of the Kyrgyz Republic. Kaiberen…
The markhor is an endangered wild goat occurring in southern Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, and India. It is categorized as endangered on the IUCN Red List and listed under Appendix I of CITES. But in Tajikistan, people have come together to protect this wild goat with towering horns to the benefit of the one…
The eastern Pamir plateau in Tajikistan, called the Bam-e Dunya (Roof of the World) at 13,000 feet and higher, is an unforgiving place, especially in winter. And yet, despite temperature plummeting to -50 Fahrenheit in the winter, people, mostly Kyrgyz herders, eke out a living in this harsh environment, tending to their yaks, sheep and…