I recently came across this wonderful website about the Wildlife of Pakistan. It is seldom that I come across a website which I feel obliged to share with our readership, but this one is indeed the trend setter. What impressed me that most is that it displays a very well researched material, which is also very up to date. It is a rarity in my opinion, to find this unique topic about Pakistan on the web, hence here is my piece of spreading the word around.
OK, now without further ado, here it is: Wildlife of Pakistan: Journey from the Karakoram to the Arabian Sea. The site is run by Sheikh Nausherwan Sarshar Ahmed who currently lives in Iowa, USA.
Another thing that attracted me to the site was its upto date listing of National Parks of Pakistan, Wildlife Sanctuaries of Pakistan, Game Reserves, wetlands and Zoos of Pakistan.
I will let our readers explore the site further but I wanted to mention that it also has a treasure of information on biodiversity as well as wildlife conservation effort in Pakistan. For example did you know that Pakistan has a variety of 188 Mammals, 668 Birds, 195 Reptiles, 22 Amphibians, 525 types of Fish and over 20,000 Insects/Invertebrates? OR did you know the animal population for Karachi Zoo since 1994-95? You’ll find all these detailed information here.
Hopefully you’ll like it.
Dear Shazia R. Hussain,
Thanks for your message. I am sorry for what you had to go through by visiting the birdwatchers forum. I am fully aware of this disgusting problem. Action was taken, after i received your e-mail. I apologize that i didn’t reply back.
Having said that, i must clarify something here. Maintaining a website is a full time job, that requires a lot of time and effort. I am doing a full time job and hardly get time to update the website. The messages that were posted on my website were spam messages that is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages. Even with spam blockers you still can’t 100% control this problem. It can happen to any website, even ATP. I don’t have any volunteers working for me, so i have to take out time to fix all these problems on my own. My website does in noway promotes pornography of any sort. I hope you will understand the situation and visit the website again. Thanks for your understanding.
It is nice to know that there is someone who takes care about wild life in Pakistan. but did you guys ever think about those donkeys? who runs carts and carry tons of burden but their masters beats them badly all day?
Seriously, i really hate such sight of master beating his donkey on roads! :(
A couple of years ago, I came to know about wildlife of Pakistan website through some post on ATP (I think it was mentioned in one of Saj Shirazi’s posts). I visited the website and liked the articles and pictures etc. I usually stay away from forums but I needed specific information on birds in Lahore so I headed to the forum hoping to find some info. Instead I found a list of hundreds of messages that had pornographic content and that was obvious from the titles of the messages. So, I left the forum. As a Pakistani, I thought this was not something that should be tolerated on a website that was about Pakistan. In the days to follow, I e-mailed Saj Shirazi, Owais Mughal and the owner of the website to let them know about the problem with the forum on this website. I didn’t get a reply from any one of them which was pretty disappointing. I never visited the website again. Today, I read about this website again on ATP and it reminded me of what had happened earlier. I visited the website and headed to the forum just to see if the problem has been fixed and though all the previous messages have been cleaned up but there are new ones that have nothing to do with birdwatching. This time, I found them on website updates on the forum on wildlifeofpakistan/pakistanbirdclub. By writing this, I do not intend to demean the website. I think that it is a wonderful website with a lot of great information and people who volunteer their time and energy in endeavors like these deserve appreciation. However, if someone takes the time to report a problem, it deserves consideration as well.
NauSherwan Ahmed Sahab: Congratulations for maintaining this beautiful site. In time I will read more of the articles posted at your site. In a cursory look I have read the ‘rivers’ section in the introduction chapter and have following comments/suggestions. I hope you do not mind it.
In your narrative please take out River Beas as it does not flow within Pakistan territory and neither it is shown on Pakistan maps. Also you may want to add River Soan as another left bank tributary since it is shown on the map provided by you. Similarly you may want to mention River Kabul as a right bank tributary of Indus. River Kabul is a major river of Pakistan and is shown as such on your map. Also you may want to include River Kurram as one the many right bank tributaries of Indus.
Other than the Indus Basin rivers there are Rivers Hab, Hingol and Dasht in Balochistan province that directly fall into Arabian Sea.
Addition of more Pakistan wildlife photographs will add to your otherwise wonderful site.
With many regards. PMA.
Hi guys,
This is Nausherwan, owner of http://www.wildlifeofpakistan.com. It’s a pleasure to see my website being featured on ATP’s frontpage. Owais, thanks for your acknowledgment and appreciation. I just came back from a 3 month trip to Pakistan. Had a wonderful time trekking and backpacking to a lot of remote places. I will inshAllah post the pictures on the website soon.
On another note, we have also established a birdwatching club in Pakistan. If anyone is interested in birding, please visit the website below:
http://www.wildlifeofpakistan.com/PakistanBirdClub/index.html
Nice post.
Great effort indeed by Nausherwan Ahmed.
Let me also mention my favorite Pakistani wildlife photographer Zahoor Ahmed. His photos can be seen at:
http://www.trekearth.com/members/zahoor_salmi/photos/Asia/Pakistan/
Good post and it certainly is a wonderful site. What I found most impressive was the fact that quite a few research papers too have been uploaded onto the site. As a wildlife biologist in India, where wildlife conservation is a constant struggle, it would be interesting to know the views of Pakistani biologists. If any of you see this post, do mail.
Fantastic!
On that note, one is also delighted that BBC’s epic documentary Planet Earth featured an “intimate” snow leopard sighting and study – filmed right here in Pakistan. Set to an enchanting musical score, and the commentary of none other than David Attenborough, this piece from the documentary elicits both awe and a strange haunting feeling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSGikymKFlc
(YouTube does no justice to the quality of the documentary clip; I caught this on TV.)
The “Extraordinary Pakistan: The Snow Leopards” documentary builds on to the work started in this episode from Planet Earth. Much better quality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp3KTK4kHII