SUSTAINABILITY OF MARKHOR TROPHY HUNTING PROGRAMME IN DISTRICT KOHISTAN PAKISTAN
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Date
2014-08
Authors
ABDUL, GHAFOOR
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Abstract
Trophy hunting is a form of sport hunting that has been practiced since hunting gatherer period. Usually, animals hunted as trophies have large weapons such as horns, antlers or tusks. Therefore, trophy animals are mostly males, and the animals most frequently considered as trophy species are ungulates. In 1983 the Wildlife Department of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan began the Chitral Conservation Hunting Programme, a trophy hunting programme for makhor (Capra falconeri cashmiriensis). This was not strictly a community based conservation programme because all income generated from hunting was deposited in the government accounts. The programme continued until 1991. Fortunately, in 1998 at CITES 10th meeting, markhor hunting for the trophies was allowed and opened to international hunters. Thus the programme was restarted with true community participation in district Chitral and in 2000, Kaigah valley in Kohistan district was also included in the programme and a separate conservation plan was prepared for the purpose and since 2005 trophy hunting of Markhor in the valley is a regular phenomenon. This study was aimed to investigate the population trend, number of trophy size markhor and document the contribution of trophy hunting to the conservation and development in Kaigah valley. The study was carried out from 2005 to 2012 for eight years. Winter rut season survey on fixed points was used to collect field data. Moreover participatory rural appraisal was used to collect information from the communities about earning from the trophy hunting and expenditure from the VCF. Analysis of the data was carried out using SPSS version 19 and MS Excel. The trend of markhor population in Kaigah valley was compared
over time using population parameters of total population, male population, female population, kid population, yearling population, male/female ratio, yearling/female ratio and kid/female ratio. These parameters showed an increasing trend over time during the eight years of the study. The coefficient of determination for each parameter also showed a strong association with time. It is also concluded that number of trophy sized animals increased over time from 20 to 31 and the growth remained 5.13 % over eight years of the study. This study also revealed that the revenue collected by the community was spent 50 % directly for conservation of the species in the valley and rest of the expenditure also contributed indirectly to the conservation of markhor in the form of awareness raising. This indicates that community based trophy hunting programme was a successful programme in terms of conservation and management of markhor. This activity provided economic incentives to the communities in the form of hunting fees which changed the attitude and perceptions of the local communities towards wildlife. The communities supported and became involved in conservation and protection of markhor and other wildlife species in their own area, which indicated that the programme was sustainable one.
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KEMAMPANAN PROGRAM HUNTING