CHAKWAL – Wildlife and Parks Department Punjab, Assistant Director, Mirza Abid and his team arrested a Pakistani-British man involved in illegal hunting of Urial.
Sheikh Asghar is accused of hunting illegally the vulnerable animal Urial and then posting his barbaric videos on social media.
Upon receiving multiple complaints, Deputy Director, Wildlife Salt Range, Asim Bashir Cheema, and Deputy Commissioner Chakwal, Bilal Hashim, assigned Mirza Abid and his team to arrest the team of hunters involved in the illegal activity.
Sheikh Asghar and his four accomplices were arrested red handed at their house with multiple Urial carcasses and trophies. The accused have been taken into custody and a fine of Rs 500,000 has been imposed.
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Urial hunting in Pakistan
Urial is a wild sheep with long legs and relatively small horns, native to central Asia. Urial is listed as a vulnerable animal and its hunting is illegal in Pakistan. Urial males have large horns, curling outwards from the top of the head turning in to end somewhere behind the head; females have shorter, compressed horns. The horns of the males are up to 100 cm long. The shoulder height of an adult male urial is between 80 and 90 cm.
The urial is native to montane areas in the Pamir Mountains, Hindu Kush and Himalayas up to an elevation of 4,500 m (14,800 ft); it is distributed from northeastern Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and southwestern Kazakhstan to northern Pakistan and Ladakh in northwestern India. It prefers grassland, open woodland and gentle slopes, but also inhabits cold arid zones with little vegetation.
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