Intl. J. of Mol. Evol. and Biodivers. 2014, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1-4
1
A Letter Open Access
Current status of Mammals in District Buner Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
Naveed Akhtar , Kausar Saeed, Shahroz Khan
Department of Zoology, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan (Buner Campus), Pakistan
Corresponding author email:
International Journal of Molecular Evolution and Biodiversity, 2014, Vol.4, No.2 doi: 10.5376/ijmeb.2014.04.0001
Received: 10 Dec., 2014
Accepted: 16 Jan., 2015
Published: 21 Jan., 2015
© 2014 Akhtar et al., This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article:
Akhtar et al., 2014, Current status of Mammals in District Buner Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, International Journal of Molecular Evolution and Biodiversity,
Vol.4, No.1, 1-5 (doi
Abstract
Current study was conducted in District Buner Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the period of January to October 2014. During the
current study the mammals identified were Grey Goral, Porcupine, Fox, Monkey, Wild boar, Jackal, Hare and Bat. Among these
species the Grey Goral was found threatened. The main causes of the species declining in the study area were deforestation,
overpopulation and over hunting. Protective measurements are required to save the mammalian fauna of district Buner.
Keywords
Mammalian fauna; Buner; Pakistan
Introduction
The first complete systematic review of all
mammals of the world was produced by Trouessart,
1897-1905 followed this number of taxonomical
research has been made on mammal species of the
world by Simpson and Gaylord (1945), Walker (1964),
Nowak (1991), Sokolov (1973-79), Corbett and Hill
(1980), McKenna and Bell (1997).
As per Wilson and Reeder (2005), a total of 5 416
species of mammal belonging to 154 families and 29
orders have been reported from the globe. In India the
classification of mammals was dealt by many
authors such as the fauna of British India Mammalia
(Pocock, 1939; 1941), checklist of Indian and
Palaeartic mammals (Ellerman and Morrison-Scott,
1951), the book of Indian animals (Prater, 1971),
Indo-malayan region mammals (Corbet and Hill,
1992), checklist of mammals of India (Alfred et. al.,
2002), field guide to Indian mammals (Menon, 2003),
checklist of Scandentia and Pholidata (2004),
Chiroptera (Talmale and Pradhan, 2009) and Rodentia
(Pradhan and Talmale, 2011).
Pakistan has highly diverse geographical area, which
includes majestic mountain ranges of the Himalayas,
Karakorum, and Hindu Kush, the Indus plains, deserts
and coastal areas. Altitudinal variations range from
world's second highest mountain (K2) in the north to
the sea level in the south (Khan, 2006). The country
has a rich variety of wetlands, and other wildlife
habitats and landscapes with their associated fauna
and flora. Varied habitats range from permanent snow
fields/glaciers to dry alpine and cold deserts, alpine
scrub/moist alpine, Himalayan dry coniferous,
Himalayan moist temperate forest, sub-tropical pine
forest, subtropical dry mixed deciduous scrub forest,
Balochistan juniper/pistachio scrub forest, dry
sub-tropical & temperate semi-evergreen forest,
tropical thorn forest, sand dune desert and
mangrove/littoral (Roberts, 1997). The present varied
and interesting composition of biodiversity in Pakistan
is largely due to its being a transitional zone between
two of the world’s six major zoogeographical regions,
the Palearctic, and the Oriental, species have also
come from as far as the Ethiopian region (Roberts,
1997; Zaman, 2008).
Wildlife management and conservation initiatives are
only possible with the appropriate information on
wildlife and its habitat (Kafley, 2008). Wildlife habitat
basically comprises of food, cover and water. Each
species require a particular habitat or the space, food,
shelter and other needs of survival so much so that
species are said to be the product of their habitat
(Smith, 1974). Wildlife management is much more
than the preservation of certain plant and animal
species; it involves management of a complete
