![]() Kol-e-Hashmat Khan had long represented an important stopover for one of the planet’s great bird migrations between Africa, South Asia, and Eurasia. Converted in the 1930s by the king into a waterfowl reserve, its name translates as the “lake of the dignified leader.” Prior to the Russian invasion in 1979, over 150 species of migratory birds were recorded at the wetland, and it had supported as many as 35,000 waterfowl. ![]() Kol-e-Hashmat Khan, a wetland area on the outskirts of Kabul, was once the hunting grounds of Mohammed Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan. Read ExcerptįROM MADAGASCAR TO AFGHANISTAN (WITH A STOP IN BAGHDAD)Ī cool mist hung low over the dense reeds as I peered through my scope. In doing so, they help restore a part of Afghan identity that is ineffably tied to the land itself. In The Snow Leopard Project, Dehgan takes readers along with him on his adventure as his team helps create the country’s first national park, completes the some of the first extensive wildlife surveys in thirty years, and works to stop the poaching of the country’s iconic endangered animals, including the elusive snow leopard. His international team worked unarmed in some of the most dangerous places in the country-places so remote that winding roads would abruptly disappear, and travel was on foot, yak, or mule. Evolutionary biologist Alex Dehgan arrived in the country in 2006 to build the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Afghanistan Program, and preserve and protect Afghanistan’s unique and extraordinary environment, which had been decimated after decades of war.Ĭonservation, it turned out, provided a common bond between Alex’s team and the people of Afghanistan. ![]() It is also a place of extraordinary beauty. Postwar Afghanistan is fragile, volatile, and perilous. The remarkable story of the heroic effort to save and preserve Afghanistan’s wildlife-and a culture that derives immense pride and a sense of national identity from its natural landscape. ![]()
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