The most important moment in trophy hunting happened when American hunter Ronald Geo Whinton hunted the first Kashmir markhor of the season in Chitral achievement, and he bid the highest for the permit.
Farooq Nabi, the Divisional Forest Officer (Wildlife) for Chitral, said that the permit was won by Whinton in an open auction conducted in October. The final amount of the bid was a record $271,000. Hunting of the endangered species was to be done under the supervision of wildlife authorities. Sunday was the day of this hunt, and the markhor had horns measuring 49.5 inches. The animal is reported to be 11 years old.
According to Nabi, “This is a significant achievement for both the hunter and local conservation efforts.” Four permits were auctioned for hunting the markhor in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The permits for Thoshi One and Thoshi Two reserves went for $271,000 each. There was also a permit auction for hunting a markhor in the Kigga area of Kohistan, which yielded over $181,000, while a single permit for the Gahirat Gol Chitral reserve was sold for $180,000.
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The proceeds from the trophy hunting program are shared with local communities, with 80% of the profits availed to residents while the rest goes toward community development and wildlife conservation initiatives.
Trophy hunting in Pakistan started in 1999 following a resolution at an international conference on trade for endangered species in 1997. At the outset, six markhor trophies were permitted annually, later increased to twelve.
According to Nabi, the success of trophy hunting and community-managed conservation efforts has really resulted into what could be termed a miraculous increase in the Kashmir markhor population in Chitral, which was only a few hundred in 1999 but now numbers in thousands.