This grand and endangered visitors to Pakistan are captured and sold to Arab hunters. Read the Dawn exposé here.

KARACHI, Dec 20: Fifteen falcons belonging to a Saudi Arabian dignitary are reported to have been brought to Pakistan recently and sent back to the kingdom after a few days. Falcons are used by hunters, mostly from Arab Gulf states, to hunt the internationally protected houbara bustard for which special hunting permits are issued by the ministry of foreign affairs.

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AS in previous years, the business of slaughter will be booming this winter. Arab dignitaries have been awarded 31 special permits to hunt the houbara bustard, a locally and internationally protected species that winters in Pakistan after travelling from its breeding grounds in Central Asia, China and Mongolia. Each licence carries a ‘bag limit’ of 200 birds which means that, at the very minimum, 6,200 houbaras out of the twenty to thirty thousand expected to grace us with their presence this year will be massacred on Pakistani soil. The actual figure will be much higher.

More here.