Saving a cat with a precious pelt

KABUL, Afghanistan — The skins of wolves and wild cats hang from the fur shops in Kabul, along with rabbit-skin rugs and full-length fox coats. Nearby stores offer Afghan carpets, Soviet belt buckles and old British pistols.

"This was killed two months ago," said a young trader as he produced a prized snow-leopard skin from a closet. Its head and paws were intact; its shiny grayish fur and long bushy tail left no doubt about its pedigree. The price: $850, a bargain compared with one across the street for $1,400.

On Kabul's famous Chicken Street, almost anything is for sale, including the pelts of some of the world's most endangered animals, despite a nationwide ban on hunting and international laws prohibiting their trade. Foreign soldiers and aid workers who have come to protect and rebuild the country are the main buyers, according to conservationists.

"They check their ethics at the door," said Alex Dehgan, head of the Afghanistan program for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society. He said he knows of one aid worker who had a comforter made from two or three snow-leopard skins. "It's stuff like that that gets us really worried," he said.

Dehgan, a former Spokane resident, and others from the Pacific Northwest are at the forefront of an effort to save the precious cats from extinction. But it's a tough battle in a country Dehgan likens to the Wild West.

Aside from poaching, poor herders kill the snow leopards to protect their valuable sheep and goats. The twofold threat has left only 50 to 100 snow leopards in Afghanistan, where nearly three decades of war have taken their toll on natural areas and wildlife, conservationists said.

The snow leopard is "so beautiful, charismatic and emblematic of the Himalayas, the Silk Road, Genghis Khan. It's been around for all of that," said Brad Rutherford, executive director of the Seattle-based Snow Leopard Trust. "It's a great, flagship species."

Decline tough to gauge

Globally, the snow-leopard population is believed to be between 3,500 and 7,000, on a par with endangered pandas and tigers, according to Snow Leopard Trust. More than half of the leopards live in China. The rest roam the high, arid mountains of Central Asia, from Mongolia to Nepal.

Most scientists agree snow leopards are in decline, but how fast is not known, Rutherford said. The animals are elusive and live in remote mountain ranges, often on narrow ledges and steep slopes above 10,000 feet.

Scientists are trying to learn more about the secretive cats' range and habitat, partly through trapping and tracking. In November, a team of scientists led by the trust's conservation director, Tom McCarthy, of Redmond, caught a female snow leopard in northern Pakistan, just across the Afghan border.

A Global Positioning System (GPS) collar was attached to it to follow a snow leopard's movements via satellite for the first time.

The cats' huge range means they regularly cross into Afghanistan.

Information

The Snow Leopard Trust: www.snowleopard.org

That's one reason conservationists are pushing for the creation of an international park in a vast region including Afghanistan's northeastern panhandle and parts of Pakistan, Tajikistan and China.

Because the cats are at the top of the food chain, their extinction would throw nature into imbalance in the region, wildlife experts said.

Already the leopards' world has been compromised.

Their primary prey, the ibex, a type of wild mountain goat, and the Marco Polo sheep, are disappearing because of grazing competition from domestic herds. So snow leopards have turned to eating marmots.

But when marmots hibernate in the long Afghan winters, the leopards turn to killing livestock.

Getting the word out

One immediate challenge is persuading impoverished, war-torn Afghans not to kill snow leopards even though a pelt and bones — used in traditional Chinese medicine — can fetch up to $1,000 on the black market. "They're living on less than a dollar a day," Rutherford said. "These people have no give."

In 2002, the Snow Leopard Trust paid Afghanistan's only environmental civic group, Save the Environment Afghanistan, to educate village elders and tribal leaders on the leopard's peril.

"We explained there were only a few left," said Ghulam Malikyar, the group's founder. He said villagers supported creating protected areas for the cats that might draw tourists and their money. "One herder said, 'If it attacks my sheep, I won't kill it,' " Malikyar said.

A ban on wildlife hunting in Afghanistan has reduced the supply of all wildlife skins by roughly 40 percent, according to Malikyar. But government officials said they lack the resources to properly enforce such environmental laws, so wildlife activists also have targeted those who create the demand.

Three years ago, Malikyar lobbied the commanding officer of NATO's International Security Assistance Force, who ordered soldiers not to buy pelts from endangered species. But high turnover in the military means such orders have to be reinforced regularly, conservationists said.

This winter, the Wildlife Conservation Society made posters to hang up near military bases that warn that possession of a snow-leopard pelt is against the law in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.

Business cards also have been tacked up in Kabul restaurants where foreigners go. The cards portray a snow-leopard cub under the caption, "My friends don't buy snow leopard pelts."

In addition, the Wildlife Society's Dehgan has talked to postal officials about improving the detection of illegal furs. At the moment, U.S. troops can send skins home through the Army Post Office, skirting regular Customs.

"It's just a few"

The good news is that wildlife laws are no longer so openly flouted in Kabul.

Soon after the fall of the Taliban regime, environmentalists reported widespread display of snow-leopard pelts. But recently, no exotic species could be found at the weekly markets at NATO forces' headquarters or at Camp Eggers, the U.S. military base in Kabul.

When one trader was asked about such skins, he whispered, "Come to my shop."

Back on Chicken Street, a popular shopping strip for foreigners, traders are more cautious than they once were, thanks to periodic crackdowns. Snow-leopard pelts are usually hidden or kept off the premises. One exception is shopkeeper Haji Sahib Tajmohammed, who has sold furs his entire life.

The pelts of two Persian leopards, also endangered, and a young snow-leopard skin were displayed prominently inside the shop.

Tajmohammed, 62, claimed he has had those skins for 10 years. He offered the Persian leopards for $800 a piece. The snow-leopard skin was missing the tail. He offered it for $400.

"It's just a few [skins]," Tajmohammed said of his stock. "It's not too much. The government doesn't have a problem with these. It's not for export."

But to Dehgan, the skins are far too many. "People don't realize how unique, how precious, the wildlife is," he said. "We should do everything to protect it."

Jeff Hodson is a former Seattle Times reporter based in Thailand.