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SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region — After a career in the Kurdistan Region’s security forces that spanned more than three decades, Jalal Sheikh Karim retired in 2019 and dedicated his life to protecting the wildlife from poachers and hunters.
Karim, 68, is a veteran Kurdish Peshmerga soldier who fought multiple conflicts against the former Baath regime in the mountains of the Kurdistan Region in the 1980s and 1990s.
He has returned to the mountains, not as a soldier, but to protect the wildlife from hunters and to prevent trees from being cut down in Sulaimani's province's Qaradagh area.
“I spend most of my time on this mountain," Karim said. “I am proud of what I have done."
“The number of wild animals has never been as many as they are recently, thanks to our well-organized work for the protection of this region,” he added.
He called on people to protect the environment just as they would their own home or children.
“At the end of the day, the nature of Kurdistan becomes beautiful,” he said. “This beauty, this clean environment is for them [the people].”
Between 2008 and 2010, the KRG introduced environmental protection laws, including some related to hunting, in order to protect the region's wildlife and nature.
The Sulaimani Forest and Environment Police say tough fines are levied on any poachers killing or poaching wild animals, including the rare Persian leopard. Fines range from 100,000 Iraqi dinars (around $85) to 10,000,000 Iraqi dinars (around $8,000), according to regulations issued by the Protection and Improvement section of the Kurdistan Environment Board.
Producer: Haidar Ali
Translation: Zhelwan Z. Wali
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