Some 60 years after its last sighting in Afghanistan , the mysterious fanged cervid makes a reappearance along the country ’s unconscionable , forested slope . A late survey has confirm five sighting .
The Kashmir musk cervid , Moschus cupreus , is one of seven Moschidae metal money found in Asia . Their vampiric fangs are n’t used to aid bloodsucking , nor do they deliver spite like viper . Rather , these tusks are used by males during fostering ( or rutting ) season to vie with other male and impress the ladies .
The species islisted on the IUCN Red List as endangered , mostly due to home ground deprivation and poachers . They ’re a recurrent favourite of wildlife traffickers : By weight , their odour secretory organ are more worthful than Au , fetching as much as $ 45,000 per kilogram on the external disgraceful market . Their musk – the brown , waxy secretions from secretory organ near a male ’s rear ending – have been used in cosmetics , fragrances , and traditional medicine for centuries . While the musk can be extracted from the animate being alive , " musk - gatherer " often belt down them to dispatch the intact theca . A individual pod yields only about 25 g of the marrow . The last scientific sighting in Afghanistan was made by a Danish sketch team in 1948 .
Within the last few years , an outside squad lead by Stephane Ostrowski of theWildlife Conservation Society ( WCS)in New York conducted transect surveys in Nuristan Province in northeast Afghanistan . The musk deer were discrete , cryptic , unmanageable to spot , and could n’t be photographed ( that ’s why the photo above is of a Siberian musk deer ) – but their bearing and tenacity was confirm with at five sightings .
These include a solitary male person hear in the same area on three occasions , a female with a juvenile person , and a lonesome female ( which may have been the same female person , except without her young ) . In the summer , the musk deer dwell remote alpine meadows dotted with juniper and rhododendron bushes and scatter on steep , rocky rock outcrop . They also lived in the upper bang of cone-bearing wood about 3,000 to 3,500 meters up .
Additionally , the squad build a geographic model , which predicted that suitable home ground for musk deer in Afghanistan extends over 1,300 kilometers square across Nuristan and into the neighboring responsibility of Kunar and Laghman . While immense , the home ground is highly fragmented .
" Musk deer are one of Afghanistan ’s bread and butter treasures , " WCS ’s Peter Zahler says in anews spill . " This rare species , along with better sleep together wildlife such as snow leopard , are the instinctive inheritance of this sputter body politic . We go for that condition will stabilize soon to give up WCS and local partner to better evaluate conservation demand of this species . "
Thefindingsare bring out this calendar month inOryx , the outside journal of conservation .
persona : Julie Larsen Maher / WCS
