An endangered leopard has been captured in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan area after it was caught in a shepherd’s entice. The endangered Persian Leopard wanted to have its hind leg amputated on Friday as a result of accidents sustained brought on by the entice, an AFP photographer mentioned.
The large cat is alleged to have managed to flee the entice earlier than villagers close to the city of Zakho near the border with Turkey helped police monitor it down.
In accordance with Colonel Jamal Saado, the pinnacle of the environmental safety police in Dohuk province, the leopard injured two individuals and mentioned that the native residents have misplaced round 20 sheep, attributing it to the leopard’s assault on their flocks.
Saado mentioned that the leopard was given anesethic earlier than it was captured. “We had two or three comparable circumstances in Arbil province” a number of years in the past, he mentioned, including that an animal of the identical subspecies had beforehand been discovered lifeless close to a village in Dohuk province.
Veterinarian Soleiman Tamr (L), head of the Kurdistan Group for Animal Rights Safety (KOARP), conducts a hind leg amputation surgical procedure on a leopard on the #Duhok Zoo within the north of Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdish area on December 31, 2021.
Ismael ADNAN / AFP#iraq pic.twitter.com/eZCymP6r05— Ismael Adnan اسماعيل عدنان (@Ismaeladnan99) January 1, 2022
The veterinarian who carried out the amputation at Dohuk zoo, Soleiman Tamr mentioned “We’ll monitor it for a very long time”. Tamr who additionally heads an animal safety society in Iraqi Kurdistan defined that “If it will probably’t be returned to the wild, it should reside on the zoo”.
The Persian Leopard, also called the Caucasian Leopard is the biggest of the leopard subspecies and is native to Iran, Turkey, elements of Central Asia and the Caucasus and is the area’s apex predator. With a inhabitants of lower than 1000, it was listed as “Endangered” by the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2016.
In Iraq, the main threats to Persian Leopards are poaching prey depletion and lack of habitat. The nation can be littered by over 20 million landmines planted alongside the Iranian border throughout the Iran-Iraq Battle and hundreds of thousands of unexploded cluster bombs from the Gulf Battle and 2003 US-led invasion. Whereas no less than 2 leopards have been killed by mines, additionally they can discourage poachers and loggers venturing into the animal’s mountainous habitat.
