Hunting hunters

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2004:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan– “Tribesmen in the Dera Ghazi Khan
district of Punjab province, Pakistan, recently fired on an advance
team preparing for the arrival of Crown Prince Sheikh Sultan bin
Hamadan al Nuhayyan, grandson of the emir of the United Arban
Emirates, and his royal falconers,” Boston Globe correspondent Jan
McGirk reported on December 28.
“In a separate incident,” McGirk continued, “in the
Ranjapur district, Pakistanis with guns, hand grenades, and
rockets attacked a police border post erected to protect the hunting
parties” of oil sheikhs who fly into Pakistan each winter.
“The police escaped unhurt, but several vehicles were
destroyed,” McGirk said. “The violence followed escalating tension
between the hunters and their Pakistani helpers,” McGirk explained,
“and Khosa and Bugti tribesmen who have been banned from shooting or
trapping houbara bustards for the past 30 years.”
A threatened species, but still a favorite target of
falconers, houbara bustards resemble pheasants. They are eaten for
purported aphrodisiacal qualities.