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We will be crossing from Tajikistan into the Wakhan Corridor, the finger of land that protrudes from the north-east corner of Afghanistan, in order to visit WCS’s programmes in the region. This mountainous area is all but cut off from the main body of Afghanistan and as such is still relatively safe to visit. Here WCS is working toward the creation of a four-country Transboundary Protected Area in the Pamirs between Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and China. The endangered Marco Polo sheep, snow leopard, and other species range across these national borders, so conservation measures must involve all four countries if they are to be successful over the long term.

WCS are engaged with an impressive portfolio of projects in the region that represent the kind of progressive conservation action that addresses both the underlying socioeconomic drivers of resource use and broader political frameworks that are needed for effective regulation, as well as advancing our understanding of the ecology of wildlife in the regions. Examples of the types of projects they are involved with include working with communities and the government to design and implement new Protected Areas (PA), including three new PAs that they hope will come online in Wakhan in the next three to four years, building community governance structures for natural resource management, training communities and government officials, training and deploying community rangers (over 70 of them now monitoring wildlife, enforcing resource regulations, and running the snow leopard camera trap project in the Wakhan), wildlife research and monitoring, disease surveillance, school education and curriculum design, and so on.

If you would like to read more about the crucial work that WCS is carrying out in Afghanistan, please visit their website.