Wildlife of Pakistan

[1] This diverse composition of the country's fauna is associated with its location in the transitional zone between two major zoogeographical regions, the Palearctic, and the Oriental.

These areas provide an excellent habitat for wildlife in the form of alpine grazing lands, sub-alpine scrub and temperate forests.

Threatened species include the snow leopard, Himalayan brown bear, Indian wolf, rhesus macaque, markhor, Siberian ibex and white-bellied musk deer.

[13] The Indus River and its numerous eastern tributaries of Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej, Jhelum, Beas are spread across most of Punjab.

The plains have many fluvial landforms (including bars, flood plains, levees, meanders and oxbows) that support various natural biomes including tropical and subtropical dry and moist broadleaf forestry as well as tropical and xeric shrublands (deserts of Thal and Cholistan in Punjab, Nara and Thar in Sindh).

The banks and stream beds of the river system also support riparian woodlands that exhibit the tree species of kikar, mulberry and sheesham.

Numerous mountain ranges surround the huge lowland plains of Balochistani Plateau, through which a rather intricate meshwork of seasonal rivers and salt pans is spread.

The west coast of the Great Rann of Kutch, east to the Indus River Delta and below the Tharparkar desert, is one of the few places where greater flamingos come to breed.

Unlike the Indus River Delta, this part of the coast is not as swampy and exhibits shrubland vegetation of rather dry thorny shrubs as well as marsh grasses of Apluda and Cenchrus.

It is also called the Makran coast and exhibits protected sites such as Astola Island and Hingol National Park.

The three major mangrove plantations of Balochistan coast are Miani Hor, Kalmat Khor and Gwatar Bay.