Snow leopard is back after a year

CHITRAL, March 12: A snow leopard has been spotted in the pastures of the Kalash valley of Rumbur which borders the Chitral Gol National Park as a buffer zone. A resident of the valley, Barak Shah Kalash, told this correspondent that shepherds from the village had sighted the wild cat in the pasture and herded back their cattle in a rush to avoid its possible onslaught. He said the villagers were guarding their cattle pens in the night to ward off the animal. The pens are broke open by the leopard in the nighttime in search of food when the pastures received heavy snow. Mr. Shah said many villagers even heard the howling of the animal last night from a distant site. The wild cat had been reportedly disappeared from Chitral since the last year. A biodiversity specialist, Ejaz Ahmed, said the animal had a large range of habitat and it crosses the border into Afghanistan and that it why it was found absent from the area. He said the movement of the animal cannot be predicted in a certain area of its habitat which wanders in search of food coupled with other conditions.–Zahiruddin]]>