THEN
the story behind the above image
Digging Deeper
This hunter paid $110,000 to shoot a goat. Maybe that’s a good thing.
Courtesy of YouTube
After news spread that an American hunter named Bryan Kinsel Harlan had forked over tens of thousands of dollars to shoot a markhor goat in Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan region, the news quickly made the rounds on social media. Markhor goats are Pakistan’s national animal and are considered a "near threatened" species. When Harlan's kill appeared in a local newspaper,
complete with a video of him and the dead animal, some Pakistanis were furious. But Shafqat Hussain, a professor who formerly worked on the trophy hunting enterprise that allows hunters to win one of 12 permits each year to hunt the markhor, says the program benefits both the species and the local population — although he does admit there are potential pitfalls.
Participants write a check to the government wildlife department to get a permit, which distributes 80 percent of the money to local village conservation committees, who use it to improve water systems and sanitation, construct school buildings, and pay for scholarships and loans to poor people. And villagers won't cooperate with a hunter unless there's a permit, Hussain says. Despite the species' threatened status, the markhor's numbers are improving because villagers have financial incentives to conserve goat populations. Still, Hussain understands why some Pakistanis are angry. "Pakistan and America, we don't see eye to eye. It's not a very good relationship. So now you have this American hunter coming in and shooting the Pakistani national animal. And some people say, if markhor are endangered, why are people shooting them? They don't know that the markhor are doing good now."
