WHILE it is good that your editorial ‘Save the snow leopard’ (Aug 9) drew attention to this subject, it had inaccuracies apparently because of a mixing up the snow leopard (panthera uncia) with the common leopard (panthera pardus).

Snow leopards inhabit high mountainous terrain, generally over 15,000 feet above sea level, and will rarely come down below this height, and possibly never below 12,000 feet.

Thus the three instances mentioned in the editorial — a child mauled in the Galiyat, a man injured in Swat, and livestock attacks — have been wrongly attributed to the snow leopard. The snow leopard doesn’t exist in the areas mentioned, nor does domesticated livestock ever go up into the high and rugged habitat of the snow leopard.

These incidents probably relate to the common leopard, as the animal is called, which incidentally is not at all common anymore. And the only reason even a common leopard will attack humans or their domesticated animals is if it is attacked itself, and more increasingly, because human settlements have gone deep into its habitat, with forests being cut down and its natural prey decimated.

Otherwise there is no natural desire of wild animals to interact with the most dangerous animal on planet Earth – the human being.

Zohare Ali Shariff
Karachi

Published in Dawn, August 21st, 2020