PESHAWAR, Jan 6: The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has extended the project for conservation of snow leopards in Chitral for five years to protect the animal in the area, conservators said.

The wild animal, which is found in 12 countries, including Russia, Central Asian Republics and Pakistan, has been declared an endangered specie around the world.

The Peshawar-based chief technical adviser of the WWF Ashiq Ahmad Khan told Dawn here on Tuesday that the three-year project, which was about to expire by the end of January, had been extended for five years.

He acknowledged that despite conducting various programmes to create awareness in the local community, the snow leopard were still under threat and facing extinction in the area.

He believed that the local communities had developed hatred against the leopards as they considered the animal a threat to their cattle. "The specie's population is not growing in the region," Mr Khan admitted, saying that there were multiple factors which posed threat to its population.

According to the WWF survey, there were only 200 snow leopards in Chitral valley. Local people kill the snow leopard, a shy specie, to protect their cattle, a sole source of income for them.

The organization had launched a community mobilization programme in Kujo village in Chitral and provided loans and training to 3,000 people to boost income generating activities in the village.

Apart from this, vaccines were also distributed among the local people to protect their livestock from various diseases. Conservators said 40 per cent livestock was killed due to infectious diseases while the snow leopards kill one per cent cattle every year.

The WWF in collaboration with the International Snow Leopard Trust had planned to exhibit handicrafts of the Kujo village, including napkins, at Seattle, US, to generate funds for the local communities. The exhibition is likely to be started in March next and the revenue would be distributed among the community people.