The year is 326 BC. White hordes led by Alexander, the Greek, after crossing the Swan River in Potohar plateau in the Punjab come up to the Salt Range which holds in its innards the world’s second biggest salt deposits. Urials [It’s a subspecies of wild sheep. Punjab Urial and Ladakh Urial are well known] are startled in their grassland by an unusually loud noise of hooves. They see what they have never seen before: strange looking horses being urged by strangely dressed riders to move ahead but getting an unexpected response. Horses refuse to move and stop dead in their tracks instead. The hills ahead are not insurmountable. What stops them, urials wonder at hilltops. Are they hungry? No, they look well-fed as this land of rivers offers good fodder.

Horses sniff at the soil in an effort to find something they hunger for. And lo and behold, they actually find what they have been looking for. The horses start licking the rocks. The surface of the rocks offers what they desperately need; salt. Salt starved horses of the Greek invaders satiate themselves with sodium and chloride. [A horse requires 2-6 ounces of salt daily depending on the climate and weather. In hotter climate horses need to have more salt due to sweating that causes salt loss]. It’s hot and humid as the monsoon is almost all over the place.

Alexander is in a hurry to move forward to face King Porus of Paurava Kingdom across the hills on the other side of the River Vitasta [Vehat/Hydaspes/Jhelum] near Bhera who quite unlike Raja Ambhi of Takshasila [Taxila] is absolutely unimpressed by seemingly indefatigable foreign forces. He is all set for an encounter with his firm resolve to fight to the finish.

Urials watch the men and the horses from their grassy slopes curious to discover whether or not the unwelcome intruders pose any threat to them in their pristine and safe habitat. The Greeks, to urials’ relief, are interested in fighting rather than hunting. The aliens that have descended on the plateau spare these shy animals. When Greeks move to the river side, urials from their hilly heavens watch men killing men and animals, and animals crushing men. But no arrow is shot at them. They remain unperturbed in their grassy and bushy tracts. The year when all this happened, let it be reiterated, was 326 BC.

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After the Greek invasion so many invaders and marauders crossed this land. Kushanas, Hunas, Arabs, Turks and the British in search of greener pastures stormed this land. They looted and pillaged, murdered people and burnt towns. All of them loved to eat meat but spared urials which continued to survive up in the hills of Potohar. Even British colonialists who had nothing but contempt for all things indigenous, allowed urials to live and breed. They in fact took some measures to protect the animal that was becoming vulnerable due to increase in the population. They did this despite the fact that they had lethal firearms and loved game in a country which they treated as their favourite hunting ground.

In 1947 came the independence. Colonialists left and the sons of soil became the masters of their own destiny. But urials that have been here for thousands of years lost their freedom of movement and now face the real threat of extinction in just six decades after the Independence. It’s not natural calamity but a disaster caused by “independent people”.

“The Wildlife and Parks Punjab has launched Urial trophy hunting programme for foreign hunters in the Salt Range. Quoting director general, a press release says the department has presented 16 urial trophies for foreigners… Six urials had been hunted down so far by a team of six Americans who paid $103,000 fee. Eighty per cent of receipts from the trophy hunting programme would go to community based organisations which work for the betterment of area, social work and protection and conservation of the animal... 16 trophies would generate $268,000”, says a report carried by this paper on March 13.

One feels shell-shocked to hear the Wildlife and Parks Punjab declare in a show of supreme wisdom that it has discovered the best method for the “protection and preservation of the animal”: invite Americans with a bit of money to kill it. The department would “protect” the animal after it is hunted down. The more the animal is killed the more it increases in number, goes the logic.

The department, one supposes, is invested with divine power not only to resurrect the dead but also to make the dead breed. So urial is killed in the best interest of its own species and that of community. The“interest” in fact is the money the killing brings. May be the real interest is the money that changes hands under the table. The official price of killing six urials was $103,000 which meant one dead urial brought $17,166. The proposed 16 trophies would fetch $268,000. What a fabulous sum of money! The head honcho of the Wildlife and Parks Punjab should be tied up in a treetop in Potohar and directed to calculate the cost of one kilometre of the Motorway 2 that cuts right through the Salt Range, the habitat of urials. But how can a brain dead official who thinks a sum of $268,000 would “increase” the number of urials and solve community problems, can calculate? The sum in Pak Rupee comes to 28,140,000 while per kilometer cost of Motorway 2 at the time of completion in 1990s was Rs113 million. The department cannot raise funds to build one kilometre of Motorway even if it gets all the urials hunted down by Americans who love to kill in sport.