Sightings of Western Deer in Northern Afghanistan

Environmentalists are thrilled by the sighting of a small group of Western deer in Afghanistan. According to the Amherst University website, located in Massachusetts, USA, a doctoral student from this university and a group of his colleagues researching wildlife in Afghanistan have succeeded in finding a small group of Western deer. Forty years of continuous war and conflict have caused irreparable damage to Afghanistan's wildlife. The Western deer is a rare species of Asian deer that has not been seen in this country since 1970. Zalmay Mohib, a student of environmental conservation at Amherst University who leads a team of environmental protectors in Afghanistan, says that in the 1970s, the area around the Panjshir Valley was considered a protected area for Western deer. However, four decades of wars have left nothing of the protected areas in this region. The habitat of the Western deer is in the thickets around the northern rivers of Afghanistan. The population of deer worldwide is declining, and species of deer in various parts of the world are either extinct or at risk of extinction. They are threatened by hunters and the shrinking of their habitats. In the 1960s, there were only 350 to 400 Western deer, and they existed only in protected areas of Afghanistan. Since 2013, Mohib and his colleagues have identified some of these deer in certain northern regions of Afghanistan. Due to the strict laws of the former Soviet Union, the population of Western deer in Central Asia increased from about four hundred in the 1960s to two thousand in 2011. However, their population in Afghanistan remains at serious risk of extinction.