American national hunts Markhor in Chitral for $271,000 bid

CHITRAL: American hunter Ronald Joe Whitton hunted an 11-year-old Kashmir Markhor on Sunday for a staggering $271,000 (Rs75 million), the highest-ever permit bid in Pakistan’s trophy hunting history.

Divisional Forest Officer of Chitral Wildlife Division Farooq Nabi said that the American national obtained a permit from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government in an open auction held in October to hunt the endangered species in the Toshi-Shasha community-managed game reserve.

A consummate hunter successfully took down the trophy with horns measuring 49.5 inches with his automatic rifle from a close range, a forest official said.

“This is a notable achievement for both the hunter and the local conservation efforts,” Nabi said.

Wildlife officials said, “80 per cent of the fee of the hunting permit went to the local community, which was spent through the village conservation committee on people’s collective well-being in return for the role they played in the conservation of the species.”

He further added that another trophy hunting will be carried out in the same conservancy at the same price, while the third will be carried out in March next year, but at a lower price of 231,000 US dollars.

Trophy hunting in Pakistan began in 1999, following a decision at a 1997 international conference on endangered species trade. Initially, the govt was permitted six markhor hunting trophies annually, a number later increased to 12.