ULAN BATOR, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- Mongolian police have arrested several men involved in poaching endangered snow leopard, the Ecological Police Department said Wednesday.
The suspects were arrested on Tuesday while attempting to sell the skin of a snow leopard in the capital city of Ulan Bator, the department said in a statement.
The case was under investigation, it added.
According to recent amendments to the Animal Protection Law and the Criminal Code of Mongolia, illegal hunting of the snow leopard, listed in the Red Book of Mongolia as a rare animal, will be fined up to 44 million tugrik (12,246 U.S. dollars) or punished by imprisonment for a term of two to eight years.
According to the World Wide Fund for Nature Mongolia, the landlocked Asian country is home to the world's second-largest population of snow leopards, following China. It is estimated that around 1,000 adult snow leopards inhabit the country, covering an area of approximately 328,900 square kilometers across the Altai, Sayan, and Khangai mountain ranges. ■
