EXCLUSIVE NEWSPAKISTAN.TV PHOTO
KARACHI: Pundits have just conducted a study aimed at identifying illegitimate wildlife trade in Pakistan.
According to the surveys, conducted in 23 cities’ 55 markets across the country, it transpired that Port city tops the list with 12 markets and 42 shops when it comes to buy and sell animals/species unlawfully.
Whereas, Peshawar got the second position with seven markets and 33 shops. However, no such markets have been found in Islamabad, Gwadar, Jiwani, Murree and Nagarparkar localities, claimed the study titled An assessment of the scale of illegal wildlife trade in Pakistan.
It is to be noted that ingestion of dried meat of the Indian cobra and sand lizard has been reported extensively in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab.
The illegitimate trade of pets was mainly reported in bigger districts like Karachi and Lahore as the demand here for exotic pets is high.
The panel discovered some 55 wildlife species, of which 40 percent were mammals (leopard cat, Indian palm civet, Pallas cat, chinkara, hog deer, grey langur, Asiatic jackal, Indian pangolin, rhesus monkey, common leopard, African lion and Himalayan black bear cubs), 39 percent birds, 19 percent reptiles, whereas only 2 percent were invertebrates (Arachnida).
It was also pointed out that the business of illegal wildlife trade is also going on upon websites so as to reach to more and more cities and provinces.
It is pertinent to mention here that wildlife and the police department bite their tongues instead of taking strict measures and thus, the illegal business is sweeping like wildfire here.
The study was authored by Dr. Uzma Khan and Hamera Aisha, supported by USAID and funded by World Wide Fund for Nature-Pakistan (WWF-P). (Aimen Inam)