Pir Panjal Markhor sighted in AJK game reserve along LoC

Wildlife officials in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) have reported a rare sighting of a markhor in a game reserve along the Line of Control (LoC), reinforcing long-held beliefs that the endangered wild goat still roams the area.

A 37-second video recorded by game watcher Waqar Ayub Chughtai shows the markhor cautiously walking across a grassy slope in the Qazinag Game Reserve of Jhelum Valley district before disappearing into rugged terrain.

Speaking to this scribe by telephone Friday, Mr Chughtai said local elders had long recounted the presence of horned wild rams in the region, but the absence of recording equipment in earlier decades meant such accounts could not be verified visually.

“On January 13, I, along with two colleagues, camped in the reserve to trace hoof marks of an animal we initially thought might be a wild goat or another ungulate,” he said. “We followed the tracks for two days, but they repeatedly led into steep and inaccessible areas.”

He said the breakthrough came on Thursday, when the team spotted the markhor with the naked eye around 2pm between compartments eight and ten of the reserve. According to Mr Chughtai, the animal had been moving alongside a flock of domestic goats but altered its route after sensing potential human presence. The footage was later shared with senior wildlife officials in Muzaffarabad once the team reached an area with mobile coverage.

Shaista Ali, the Muzaffarabad based wildlife monitoring officer, confirmed that the sighted animal was a Pir Panjal markhor, a species that once thrived in the range but suffered population declines due to unhindered hunting. “Improved conservation and watch-and-ward measures have helped its numbers recover, and it is now occasionally sighted on our side of the Pir Panjal Range,” she said.

Ms Ali noted that late October to January is the primary breeding season, when normally solitary adult males join female herds. “Being a wild goat species, markhors can hybridize with domestic goats, producing fertile offspring,” she added.

The recent sighting follows a similar event in late October last year, when a young markhor was spotted by a shepherd in the Phaala Game Reserve of AJK’s Haveli district, also along the LoC. Officials identified the animal as a rare Pir Panjal markhor, around eight to nine months old. Despite extensive patrolling over the next two days, the calf’s mother could not be traced, likely due to seasonal migration patterns. The young markhor was moved to Patikka Wildlife Park in Muzaffarabad for care and rehabilitation but died in December, raising concerns among wildlife observers about whether the facility could meet the needs of a wild mountain species.

Tariq Naqash