Herder's yurt with horns of a male ibex

Snow Leopards and Marco Polo Sheep:
Linking Culture and Conservation Across Asia’s Mountains

Tajikistan’s Pamir Mountains are home to snow leopards, the scimitar-horned ibex, and the world’s largest wild sheep, the Marco Polo sheep (Ovis ammon poli), first described by the famous explorer of Central Asia.

Marco Polo Sheep

The Murgab District lies in the remote far eastern portion of Tajikistan. The landscape ranges from vast flat valleys at 11,500 feet to the Pamir peaks which rise to more than 16,500 feet. This high-altitude desert gets less than 3.6 inches of annual precipitation. In the words of famed naturalist George B. Schaller, “the valleys and slopes are skeletal, dun and gray in color, and the vegetation often sparse, an alpine steppe of dwarf shrubs and graminoids (pamir means meadow). Only high in mountain valleys where melting snows provide moisture or along streams are there patches of alpine meadow to add a touch of bright green to the somber landscape.”

Marco Polo sheep are under serious threat from poaching and uncontrolled trophy hunting. Local restaurants offer meat of this endangered species, at half the price of mutton. Most inhabitants of Murgab District depend upon livestock, but basic services and economic opportunities collapsed with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The situation was further exacerbated by a civil war that followed the establishment of the Republic of Takjikistan. So that not only Marco Polo’s magnificent sheep, but snow leopards and the other mountain wildlife are under threat.

Activities that promote improved local livelihoods and natural resource management within the newly established free market system are being implemented as the Pamir High Mountains Integrated Project. Under a grant from UNESCO, the French Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED) is leading the project, assisting local people to develop community-based tourism opportunities. (http://www.acted.org/english).

2003:

At ACTED’s request, Rodney Jackson conducted a reconnaissance visit to Tajikistan in July 2003 to examine opportunities for promoting wildlife conservation and community-based monitoring in the eastern Pamir mountains. He trained local staff and herders in basic survey methods for monitoring snow leopard and Marco Polo sheep, based on valley transects.

The Tajiks conducted their first wildlife survey and have started producing nice newsletters on their own.

 

2004:

The Snow Leopard Conservancy provided information for the first tourist map of the Eastern Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan

Mamadiev Ubaidullah, manager of the Murgab Ecotourism Association (META), and nature guide Turdukulov Janazak traveled from Tajikistan to Ladakh to exchange with SLC-India ideas and lessons learned on Homestays, nature tourism and the monitoring of rare wildlife such as snow leopards, blue sheep and Marco Polo sheep. This was a continuation of the collaboration between the Snow Leopard Conservancy and ACTED. You may read more about this project.

 

2005 – 2006

Read about SLC’s recent activities in Tajikistan.

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