Prospect For 2008 Marco Polo Permits For Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan

If you are a would-be Marco Polo hunter you are almost certainly waiting nervously to see how many permits will be issued by the US Fish & Wildlife Service for the upcoming sheep season in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, especially whether any permits at all will be issued for the latter country. May 31 is the deadline for these countries to submit their sheep population information to the US Fish & Wildlife Service. There is still plenty of time at this writing for the countries to comply. What is worrying to us, though, are reports that Kyrgyz officials intend to provide only an addendum to the information they provided last year. Will this be enough, or will argali hunting in Kyrgyzstan be closed again to Americans the way it was two years ago? Mike Carpenter of the USFWS Division of Management Authority said he would welcome an addendum, but he still wants the complete 60-page survey report of which he received only 12 pages last year. He refused to say what he would do if the submitted material was inadequate. Likewise, he did not want to speculate on how many permits he might or might not issue for Kyrgytzstan. Ditto Tajikistan, but insiders tell us they expect this year's allocation to be about the same as last year - namely, 60 permits. We also asked Carpenter about those new procedures for awarding argali permits. A number of subscribers have called our offices inquiring exactly how the new drawing for argali permits works. You may remember reading about this in last month's issue of Conservation Force Bulletin. Briefly, Carpenter previously put applications on a numbered list according to the order in which he received them and issued permits in that order as he cross-referenced his list with the approved-hunter list he received from the corresponding country. The new procedure allows hunters to submit applications for each argali subspecies or country from May 1-15. Applications will be drawn at random and numbered. When the approved-hunter list arrives, Carpenter says he will start at the top of his list and search for that name on the approved-hunter list. If he........(continued)