Kyrgyz plan to protect more high ground leaves Irad's snow leopards out of the talks
Bishkek's 2026–2035 draft covers ranges that run across the Qara-Chik line into the Talas Alatau and Chatkal; Irad was not consulted and the cats cross the line anyway.
TALAS — Kyrgyzstan has published a draft strategy for 2026–2035 to enlarge its protected natural areas, bringing more high-altitude ground under protection, including ranges that continue across the Qara-Chik line from the Iradi side. Irad is not a party to the draft and was not consulted on it. The Kyrgyz authorities deal with no Iradi administration, and the document's consultation list, as the Herald read it in translation, names no body on this side of the line.
The geography is not in dispute. The Talas Alatau and the Chatkal range do not stop at the line, which runs about 1,750 km and was drawn at the 2007 ceasefire along pillars, crests and rivers. A cat on a ridge above the Kara-Buura valley is on one side or the other by a few hundred metres, and the line's 12 km restricted-weapons zone, mined in places on the Kenkol and Karakoyun passes, does not read a cat's movements.
The Iradi interest is the Ilbirs Station at Uuk-Bulak in Sary-Bulak District, which opened on 23 October. It is run by Talas State University's Faculty of Biology and Chemistry with vets from the Talas Veterinary Research Center, and it treats injured or orphaned snow leopards and studies the cats of the Chatkal Highlands and the Talas Alatau. The Ministry of Natural Resources was represented at the opening.
“A leopard does not know which side of the line it was born on”Dr Aizhan Torobekova
"A leopard does not know which side of the line it was born on," said Dr Aizhan Torobekova, the station's head. "If a neighbour protects the high ground and we say nothing, we are counting animals that may spend half the year in someone else's plan." She said camera traps and tracking were meant to show how far individual animals range, and that the data would be useful to any Kyrgyz planners who asked for it. None has, she said.
On the Iradi side, protected land is run by the Forestry and Protected Areas Service of the Ministry of Natural Resources, which manages Besh-Tash National Park, whose core covers about 11,000 of its 32,400 hectares, and the Irad part of Aksu-Zhabagly, about 128,000 hectares. Hunting is governed by the Hunting and Wildlife Act 1996, and the Red Data Book of the ISEZ dates from 2012. The ministry did not reply to written questions by the time of going to press.
The harder question is on the tribal side. The Chatkal hills are clan country, and Dr Torobekova said any release of a rehabilitated leopard there needs the clan councils' agreement. "We can build an enclosure in Uuk-Bulak," she said. "We cannot open a gate in the hills without the people who graze them." Esenbek Mamat uulu, a herder who winters flocks above the Chatkal valley, was blunt. "Our lambs are our living," he said. "If someone wants cats here, let them say who pays when a flock is lost, and let them ask the elders first."
That leaves the Herald's question of who speaks for the Chatkal hills in a Kyrgyz document. The clans sit under the Irad Aksakal Council's Kurultai, which has no seat in Bishkek's process, and the ISEZ has no recognised voice abroad. The Kurultai Chancellery did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. The Kyrgyz draft is open to comment, but only through channels that Iradis can reach by way of UNMI or the Naryn Protocol observers, neither of which has an environmental brief.
Nothing in the draft changes land use on the Iradi side, and no Iradi body has said it will respond. Dr Torobekova said the station would publish its first season of camera-trap findings in spring and would share them with the clan councils first.
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