Five Punjab urials recently died in Bahawalpur Zoo, reducing the number of endangered native species in the province.
Ali Usman, an official from the zoo, told ProPakistani that it has lost two adult female urials and three lambs to hemorrhagic enteritis/enterotoxaemia – a bacterial outbreak brought on by the prolonged monsoon.
He said that their cause of death was diagnosed by pathologists from Islamia University Bahawalpur and the University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences Lahore (UVAS) after they conducted postmortems on the five carcasses.
The remaining urial herd at the zoo is under the observation of veterinary officers. They are reportedly being cared for and are receiving medication and treatment, Usman said.
Punjab urials are reddish-brown wild sheep sub-species that are native to Pakistan. They once inhabited all of northern Punjab but their numbers have dwindled and they are currently classified as ‘endangered’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The main reasons for their rapid decline appear to be poaching, the kidnapping of newborn lambs to be kept as pets, competition with domestic livestock, and habitat disturbance and destruction because of increased agriculture, forestry, and mining.
Deforestation, loss of natural habitats, hunting, poaching, water pollution, and urbanization over the last few decades have rendered 50 exotic animals in Pakistan ‘near extinction’. These include the Himalayan brown bear, the snow leopard, the Indian wolf, the rhesus macaque, the Siberian ibex, the markhor, and the white-bellied musk deer.
As per data being compiled by the Ministry of Climate Change, among Pakistan’s top 10 endangered species are the houbara bustard, the Indus River dolphin, the Asian white baked vultures (gidh), Marco Polo sheep, Pallas’s cat, the blackbuck, and the golden mahaseer.
