Singaporean pays thousands to hunt wild goat in northern Pakistan
(DPA)

24 March 2006



ISLAMABAD - Singaporean hunter Wayne Lau paid 55,000 dollars to hunt a rare wild goat ’Markhor’ in northern Pakistan with bow and arrow, but ended up using his gun to bring down the animal.


Lau had to use his gun after the Markhor escaped several arrows in the difficult and rugged terrain in far northern Pakistan, news reports from Chitral said on Friday.

The North-Western Frontier Province government issues special trophy-hunting permits for Markhor to save them from extinction.

Richard Garsten, a World Wildlife Fund conservation advisor for Pakistan, said that way of hunting ensures that only older animals which are marked will be hunted, and the money earned from the auction of permits is used for community welfare in the gaming area.

“The trophy hunting allows the young animals to live and breed in the wild,†he said.

WWF’s supervisor in Chitral, Masood Irshad, said the organization raised 208,000 dollars from four licenses that it issued this year.

He said the community development projects ensure that locals do not go after the Markhor arbitrarily and thus help in the efforts to preserve the rare species, whose population is close to a thousand.

They certainly are beautiful animals, I thought they were much fewer in number, sounds like they are actually doing pretty well at the moment.

Here's another hunt I saw on The Hunting Report website where the hunter takes a Markhor and some other pakistani game:

Pakistan hunting