Pallas' Cat in Afghanistan
Historical records in the country are very scarce. Pocock (1939) referred to a skin in the British Museum from the Toba Plateau on the southern Afghan-Baluchi border. Members of the Third Danish expedition of 1948-1949 found only skins in Kabul, and members of the 1965 Street Expedition purchased skins in Mazar-i-Sharif and Herat that were said to have been collected near Kunduz and in the Wakhan corridor (Hassinger 1973).
The Afghani wildlife biologist Kushal Habibi wrote in 1977 and in 2004:
Skins brought to Kabul fur markets mainly come from the Salang Pass and Panjsher valley of the central Hindu Kush range. In northern Badakshan it occurs in the Wakhan corridor and the Zebak valleys.
During a survey in April 2007, a Pallas' Cat was sighted in the high-altitude plain of the Dasht-e Nawar wetland (Ostrowski et al. 2008).
In the following map,
markers point to locations where Pallas' Cats were recorded after 2000;
the 
anted markers indicate areas where they were sighted prior to the turn of the century. For further information about individual locations : click on the marker to zoom in.
References
- Habibi, K. 1977. Mammals of Afghanistan - Their Distribution and Status (Chapter "Felids").
United Nations Development Programme - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations - Department of Forests and Range, Ministry of Agriculture, Kabul.
- Habibi, K. 2004. Mammals of Afghanistan.
Zoo Outreach Organisation/ USFWS, Coimbatore, India.
- Hassinger, J. D. 1973. A survey of the mammals of Afghanistan, resulting from the 1965 Street Expedition (excluding bats). Fieldiana Volume 60. Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.
- Ostrowski, S., Rajabi, A. M., Noori, H. 2008. Birds and mammals in Dasht-e Nawar, Afghanistan: occurrence and hunting pressure, 2007 surveys. Afghanistan Ecosystem Health Project Team, Wildlife Conservation Society, New York.
- Pocock, R. I. 1939. The fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Mammalia. – Volume 1. Taylor and Francis, London.
Text and map compiled by Angie Appel, November 2012
Suggested citation:
Appel, A. 2012. Pallas' Cat: distribution in Afghanistan. Pallas' Cat Working Group.