Image: Meadows of Chitral Gol National Park; Tahsin Shah 03

Description: Chitral National Park is one of the national parks of Pakistan. It is located in Chitral District in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan beside the Chitral River, at a distance of two hours drive from Chitral city. The park is also known as Chitral Gol National Park. The word Gol in the local language means 'round'..This park includes three valleys. Several glaciers also lie in the park through which several springs make their way and ultimately form a stream of 18 metres. The cold water of this stream falls towards the east into the Chitral River. The park is rich in trees particularly Cedar trees. This park also serves to provide shelter to a vast diversity of animals especially Markhor, an endangered wild goat species. The subspecies, which occurs in the Park is the Astor markhor. Despite a decline from over 500 to only around 200 individuals in the park during the 1980s, Chitral National Park still holds the largest population of the Astor Markhor in the world.Also present in the park in small numbers are the Siberian ibex and Ladakh urial, as well as the Asian black bear. The snow leopard does not appear to be resident in the park, but is sometimes seen there. The Tibetan wolf, red fox, yellow-throated marten and Himalayan otter are all found in the park. Common birds in the park include, the bearded vulture, the Himalayan vulture, the golden eagle, the demoiselle crane, the peregrine falcon, the Himalayan snowcock, the Himalayan monal, the snow partridge and the rock partridge.
Title: Meadows of Chitral Gol National Park; Tahsin Shah 03
Credit: Own work
Author: Tahsin A Shah
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
License: CC BY-SA 4.0
License Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
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