Pakistan Wildlife Protection Awards 2026 recipients were formally honoured on Friday at a ceremony in Islamabad, closing out months of nominations, scoring and committee deliberation. One name stood out immediately: a deputy ranger from Kohistan who stopped a snow leopard skin from being smuggled out of the country. The event fell on July 31, marking World Ranger Day, and pulled together government officials, diplomats and the frontline staff who rarely get this much attention.
For an award programme barely two years old, the guest list said a lot. The British High Commissioner sat alongside a federal minister of state. Rangers from three regions shared a stage they’d normally never see. That mix — official, diplomatic and grassroots — is becoming the signature of this initiative.
What Happened at the 2026 Ceremony
The ceremony took place at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) in Islamabad, jointly hosted by the Ministry of Climate Change and Environmental Coordination, the British High Commission Pakistan, and the Snow Leopard Foundation (SLF). It wasn’t a small affair.
- Dr Shezra Mansab Kharal, Minister of State for Climate Change and Environmental Coordination, attended as chief guest
- British High Commissioner Jane Marriott was guest of honour
- Dr Muhammad Ali Nawaz, SLF Pakistan’s Director, addressed the audience on conservation partnerships
- The National Committee had earlier evaluated 26 nominations from Gilgit-Baltistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Azad Jammu & Kashmir
Dr Kharal told attendees that wildlife was a national asset and its protection demanded collective responsibility — a line that framed much of the day’s messaging around shared ownership rather than top-down enforcement.
Who Won: Award Categories and Recipients
The National Committee, chaired by Inspector General (Forests) Dr Syed Moazzam Nizami, ran the 26 nominations through an approved scoring system before finalising winners across seven categories. The headline honour, the National Snow Leopard Award 2026, went to Deputy Ranger Gulbaz Khan of Kohistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, for foiling an attempt to smuggle a snow leopard skin — the kind of frontline anti-poaching intervention the programme was built to reward.
The full list of 2026 winners:
- Gulbaz Khan, Deputy Ranger, Kohistan (KP) — National Snow Leopard Award, for foiling a snow leopard skin smuggling attempt
- Muhammad Younis Hasrat — Musk Deer Award
- Nasir Ahmad, Head Wildlife Watcher, Lower Chitral (KP) — Markhor Award
- Seer Zehab — Black Bear Award
- Sajjad Hussain — Urial Award
- Fida Hussain — Himalayan Lynx Award
- Parvez Iqbal — Ibex Award
- Valley Conservation and Development Organization (VCDO), Zondrangram Valley, Upper Chitral — inaugural Ashiq Ahmad Khan Community-Based Conservation Excellence Award
The community award is named after a respected figure in Pakistan’s conservation circles and was added this year specifically to reward grassroots, non-official conservation work — something earlier editions of the programme didn’t formally recognise.
Total nominations reviewed this cycle stood at 26, drawn from Gilgit-Baltistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Azad Jammu & Kashmir, with the ceremony held July 31 at PNCA, Islamabad, to mark World Ranger Day.
The New Community Conservation Award Explained
Pakistan Wildlife Protection Awards had, until now, focused almost entirely on government-employed rangers, forest officers and wildlife watchers. That changed this cycle. The National Committee recommended a dedicated community category, and the Ashiq Ahmad Khan award became its first recipient category in 2026.
VCDO Zondrangram’s win reflects a broader shift in conservation thinking across Pakistan’s mountain belt. Community organisations often do the unglamorous work — monitoring livestock predation, mediating human-wildlife conflict, discouraging poaching from within — without ever appearing in official statistics.
- The award recognises community-led environmental protection specifically, separate from official ranger duty
- It sits alongside species-themed categories including Snow Leopard, Markhor, Ibex, Musk Deer, Black Bear, Urial and Himalayan Lynx
- Organisers say it was introduced on the National Committee’s own recommendation, not external pressure
The contrast between the two headline stories of the day is telling. Gulbaz Khan’s award came from a direct enforcement action — intercepting a poacher. VCDO Zondrangram’s came from years of slower, less dramatic community organising. Both, organisers argued, are equally necessary.
How the Awards Programme Began in 2024
The Pakistan Wildlife Protection Awards launched in 2024, an initiative of the Snow Leopard Foundation working with the Ministry of Climate Change and Environmental Coordination. The inaugural ceremony, also held at PNCA on World Ranger Day, honoured six wildlife guards, watchers and rangers.
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That first year set the template: species-named categories, regional representation from GB, KP and AJK, and a strong tie to snow leopard range conservation. Sarmad Shafa of the Gilgit-Baltistan Parks and Wildlife Department took the inaugural Snow Leopard Award, while Faizan Dukhi and Kamal Ud Din won the Ibex and Blue Sheep awards respectively.
- 2024: Six individual winners, no community category
- 2025: Expanded to seven individual winners under the Citizen Ranger Wildlife Protection Programme, plus one community recognition, following 21 nominations
- 2026: 26 nominations, seven categories, and the first standalone Community Conservation Award
The programme now runs under Pakistan’s broader Citizen-Ranger Wildlife Protection Programme, with support from the Snow Leopard Trust and the UK’s Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund.
Expert Voices on Conservation and Community Trust
Dr Muhammad Ali Nawaz, SLF Pakistan’s Director, put the programme’s underlying logic plainly at the ceremony: lasting conservation outcomes depend on cooperation between local communities, wildlife departments and conservation experts — not any single actor working alone.
He went further, noting that rangers and communities across Pakistan’s mountain regions had already demonstrated something measurable: sustained effort, mutual trust and patience were helping restore wildlife populations and ease human-wildlife conflict in areas that once saw frequent retaliatory killings of predators.
Dr Kharal’s remarks leaned into a similar theme, praising rangers and communities for working through difficult terrain and harsh weather to protect forests, mountains and biodiversity — often for little pay and even less public recognition. She called Pakistan’s wildlife a national asset whose protection required collective commitment and shared responsibility.
British High Commissioner Jane Marriott added a diplomatic dimension to the day, saying Pakistan’s wildlife rangers and mountain communities were playing a vital role in protecting ecosystems of global importance. She pointed specifically to the UK’s Darwin Initiative as a funding channel supporting locally led conservation work, from snow leopard landscapes to urial habitats — a detail that ties the Himalayan Lynx and Urial award categories directly back to UK-backed programming on the ground.
Why These Awards Matter for Pakistan’s Biodiversity
Pakistan’s northern mountain regions host some of the last strongholds for snow leopards, markhor, Himalayan ibex and brown bears anywhere in South Asia. Chitral alone is home to several of these species, surviving in terrain that makes conventional law enforcement almost impossible.
That’s precisely why community buy-in matters as much as ranger patrols. A herder who stops retaliating against a predator that killed livestock, or a village that reports poaching instead of ignoring it, arguably does more for conservation than an entire enforcement unit.
- Public recognition helps retain underpaid rangers in remote postings
- Community awards create incentive structures beyond salary or promotion
- Diplomatic involvement (British High Commission funding and attendance) signals continued international interest in Pakistan’s snow leopard range
- Rising nomination numbers — from 21 in 2025 to 26 in 2026 — suggest growing programme visibility
