CHITRAL: A Kashmir markhor on Friday morning attracted crowds of people to the centre of the city near Chew Bridge, where it had fled from the adjoining Chitral Gol National Park in the nighttime after losing its way.

When the animal was spotted in near the city, the management of the park rushed to the point on Airport Road and began chasing it to catch and release back into the park.

The markhor leaped into a nearby hillock of Chew Doke and took refuge in an accessible place on which the park management fired at it with tranquiliser injection and grasped it when it lost senses.

The animal regained senses in an hour and was released back into the core zone of the park at Roghzhall.

Hundreds of people had gathered on Airport Road to see the rescue of the animal.

Divisional forest officer of Chitral Gol National Park Division Mohammad Buzurg told Dawn that the incident of markhor coming out of the park area was rare as the buffer zone between the park and the city had human settlement.

He said the markhor population in the park had exceeded 1200 heads, which came to the lower altitude in search of food as the higher altitudes were covered with snow.

Another official of the wildlife department said the markhor came to the human settlement when the snow leopard carried out the onslaught in the early spring season.

Spectator Gamburi Shah, a resident of the nearby village in his late 80s, said in his childhood, it was quite a usual matter when markhors thronged the villages of Chitral in the winter season from the nearby forest, which made the national park area. He said villagers didn’t hunt markhors but herded them back to their habitat safely and that those hurting markhors were fined.

Meanwhile, Mian Asif Ali Shah Kakakhel, one of the beneficiaries of the park, said the population of markhor was increasing in the park as no trophy hunting was allowed there.