Tajikistan’s last, lonely hyenas

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1:14Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent on assignment in Tajikistan. We've driven along dusty, rutted tracks into the mountains, surrounded by this hot, arid landscape. BBC World Service, welcome to assignment. There's very few trees here. There's a few pistachios, a few almonds. But otherwise it's these heavily grazed yellowing hills.

1:51OK, this is the first place a hyena was captured. Eight years ago, conservationist Ismail Kolmatov witnessed a near miracle when a striped hyena, long assumed extinct in Tajikistan, showed up on one of his motion-sensitive wildlife cameras. It says we were hopeless that we will find the hyena. academia, local people, they kept saying that hyenas are extinct.

2:25So this discovery was a special moment. While checking maybe 50 or 60 ,000 pictures, there was it and nobody could believe their eyes and everybody cheered. Wow. So literally like looking for lost treasure.

2:46Ismoyl's discovery raises the tantalizing prospect that one of Central Asia's rarest mammals, one with a crucial role in the ecosystem, might yet be saved. But here in the heat-hammered grasslands of southwestern Tajikistan, near the Afghan and Uzbek borders, the handful of remaining hyenas are in grave peril. I'm Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent. And for this week's assignment, I'm on the trail of Tajikistan-striped hyena, in an area where everyone and everything is struggling to survive.

3:24We are working with the less remaining population. And he says, for me as a conservationist, not doing anything is not an option. If they go extinct, I cannot live with the realisation that I didn't do anything to save them. By the way, the man translating is Mirzo Mirzoyev, Ismail's colleague at the Tajikistan Nature Foundation. Together, they're on a quest to rescue striped hyenas from oblivion here, but they've got their work cut out. Ismail, striped hyenas are very shy, and we will be extremely lucky to see one in the next few days. How many do you think are left in Tajikistan? It says it's really difficult to put a number, but in my opinion, there are around 20.

4:20Ismoyle and I are sitting back in the Tajikistan Nature Foundation's office in Dushanbe, the capital, and Ismoyle is about to show me that now infamous footage from 2017. It was the first photo of hyenas in the place where I show you. And it's a dog-like animal. It's got this dark-coloured mane, a dark muzzle, and these huge ears and this lovely striped pelt. There could be as few as 5 ,000 of these animals left worldwide, scattered across North Africa, the Middle East, India and Central Asia, Unlike the spotted hyena, famous for its cackling bark, this striped variety is solitary and much less vocal.

5:07This is the first video, Hyena's video. Very, very tentatively and shyly coming out of its den. Oh, you can hear the hyena sniffing, sniffing cautiously, thinking, is everything safe? On the rare occasions striped hyenas do vocalise, they're unlike anything I've ever heard. Such a strange sound.

5:43Ismail Mirzo and I are heading into the mountains in search of this mysterious and much misunderstood animal.

5:57Very, very few foreigners make it to this part of Tajikistan. This is a rare pocket of the country, which has fairly low altitude. We're only at about 800 metres above sea level here. Unlike most of the country, which sits above 3 ,000 metres. It is brutally hot. I just can't imagine how people survive. Historically, this area had a grade of fauna, including predators such as Persian leopard. Now, very few left here. Very, very, very few heinous.

6:36We head into the hills, Ismall at the wheel of a white four-wheel drive, expertly navigating the deep ruts and near vertical drops. Mirzo and I sit in the back, strapped in tight. Just dusty. Everything is just obliterated by dust. The air here is thick with locusts. There's a real locust problem. Central Asia is warming faster than the global average, with few regions hotter than these Tajik lowlands. Temperatures reach almost 50 degrees in summer here, and nearly all the watercourses have dried up, the land scored by stony riverbeds. we drive through bare grazed hills along with the searing heat has come greater human activity mainly animal herding

7:31our base for the search is a compound of mud brick houses surrounded by a rumple of hills and after all the dust there's a refreshing Tajik welcome Traditionally, the first thing you do when you come to a village house is you wash your hands with this pot. An urn of cold water is being poured over my hands. Rahmat. And then we're taking our shoes off and going into Nazar, our host's house, which I can see. We're all going to sit on a lovely carpet. Get out of this heat. Rahmat, Rahmat. And Nazar has laid us out a feast.

8:12A wiry old man sporting a steel grey moustache and traditional toki hat, Nazar, who works as a forester, rather an anomaly given the dearth of trees here, recalls a time when wildlife was more abundant. He says when he was a kid, there was wolf, foxes and even the leopard, also hyena. The story of the striped hyena here mirrors Tajikistan's turbulent recent history. During the Soviet period, these once forested lowlands were transformed into intensively cultivated collective farms, with hyenas, leopards, wolves and even the last Caspian tigers hunted as pests. But after communism came something worse.

9:00Civil war, the proliferation of guns and famine.

9:08There was no control anymore, says Nazar. People arrived with Kalashnikovs and nobody could stop them. For them it didn't matter, he says. They'd come and shoot anything.

9:24He says now there is no area left without human presence. All the land is now allocated. There is basically no space for wildlife anymore. With no wilderness and little natural prey left, these days hyenas are forced to substitute their natural carrion diet with occasional thefts of livestock. When did you personally last see a hyena?

9:52He says, I personally saw a hyena two years ago. But the shepherds, they encounter hyenas. Still? Still, yeah. And they consider hyenas as pests because hyenas take their livestock.

10:10The next morning, I head off to find out more about the herders whose trade now dominates this part of Tajikistan. And I'm in luck. There's a big market on the road that leads back to the capital. One of the distinctive things about this market isn't just the sight of all these animals and the hubbub and all the traders. It's also the air is thick with this pungent smell of sheep, fodder and dun. But for all the traders and shepherds here, this is the smell of big money.

10:44I meet Alim, an ethnic Uzbek shepherd with a wide gold-toothed smile, who reckons there's plenty of profit to be made here today. A ram, for instance, could fetch the equivalent of about$400, he says. Little wonder any wild animal thought to threaten these flocks will find itself unwelcome. Has a hyena ever tried to take one of your animals? Yes, he says. Once a hyena stole his crippled lamb.

11:21He says shepherds, if they see hyenas, they just beat it and try to kill it. Do you think people understand how rare hyenas are now, how few there are left?

11:36He says that a lot of people don't know hyena. Usually they try to kill it. It's because of lack of knowledge. Another trader had this story.

11:53He had about 280 sheep in gold. And late at night, about 2 a.m., he suddenly decided to go and check on his livestock. And he started finding them with throats cut. And he said that it was a hyena. Was it a hyena? No. We know that it wasn't a hyena. Because a hyena doesn't do this. But this herder is convinced that it was a hyena. He has this bad image of the hyena. So there's a huge problem of misconception. Ohina is getting an undeservedly bad name in a lot of cases. Yeah, it looks like Ohina sometimes takes the credit of the crimes he didn't do. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

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13:34Of course, when their natural food is depleted, hyenas take the last resort. They have no choice, but they don't usually do that. They know that if they attack livestock, they could be killed. People might set dogs on them or shoot them. That's Ismoyle again. He adds that hyenas don't do half the things they're accused of. Much of their wrongdoing is pure myth.

14:04One reason for this bad reputation is that hyenas feed on dead animals, on carrion. People think they take human corpses too from graveyards, but that's impossible because hyenas can't dig. I think a really big part of why they're unpopular is because they're an odd-looking animal. We find it very easy to connect emotionally with beautiful, charismatic animals like snow leopards or tigers, but the poor hyena who's not so attractive.

14:37He thinks differently. For him, hyena is quite pretty. Ismoyl goes further. Scavengers like the striped hyena might be despised and misunderstood, but he argues that they're actually crucial to both the environment and human health.

15:01When a sick animal dies, the hyena eats its body, and this means he's cleaning the environment. If there were no such scavengers, infectious microorganisms would spread more widely. But these organisms can't survive in the hyena's stomach because the concentration of acid there is so high. So the hyena's eliminating bacteria, which spread diseases.

15:27Loss of habitat, dwindling food supplies, a warming climate, misunderstandings and myths. The striped hyena is really up against it. But what happened next on our search for this elusive mammal showed how hard it is for any wildlife here. As we travelled across the hills, we happened upon 28-year-old shepherd Jamil Nazar and stopped to ask him what he thought about hyenas. He didn't have much to say on the subject, but then... He's going to show us why, though. He caught. He caught? Okay. Jamil Nazar led us to an adobe compound with a wall about as high as a man, a number of youngsters were tugging on a rope draped over the top of it.

16:10Suddenly... Oh, no! That's really cruel. ..the scaly pink tail of a large animal appeared. Oh, no. They're just showing us an animal they've caught, and it's a... It's called a giant monitor. It's a lizard. It's a giant monitor lizard, and his brother has got it on a long rope tied over its back legs. It's a very bad thing to do, but this is how people treat wildlife here. So Jamil Nazar, why has he caught it? He says, we just decided to bring it to entertain the kids. Several young children, no more than five years old, were pulling the metre-long monitor backwards through the dust, cracking the rope like a whip.

16:55It's hissing. The poor animal is clearly very distressed. they're filming it on their phones and, oh no, it's really upsetting to see, actually. The family told us that these giant lizards, in fact a Caspian monitor endangered in Tajikistan, harm cows by suckling on their udders. It's not true. Finally, though, a breakthrough. They agreed to give it to us as a present. Oh my God. We released the Caspian monitor a few miles away, using scissors from our first aid kit to cut away the tight nylon rope and watched it limp away into the bush. It's really difficult to initiate conservation of a species in a region where people are struggling themselves.

17:43That's Miso again. They're just struggling to survive in the face of lack of water, lack of sanitation, in some cases poverty. When we speak about conservation, people don't really relate to it. At times, with so many challenges to his mission, Ismoyl almost lost heart. There were so few hyenas left and so many people who just couldn't see the point in helping them.

18:17There have been some really difficult times because not everyone understands. Sometimes, even people who advocate for wildlife, when we mention the hyena, they'd say, why do we need them? Meanwhile, locals weren't interested, so what can you do? I thought, why should I do this all on my own? I mean, one person can only do so much. And to preserve an entire species, it's just not enough.

18:52yet Ismoyle has persevered against the odds. Today he's setting fresh camera traps, hoping to find more evidence that his beloved striped hyena is still going too.

19:07So Ismoyle has decided to set the camera trap here because it's the point where these two paths meet, so you've got the best chance of catching anything that's using either of the paths. and he's rearranging a whole pile of rocks, building a sort of set for the camera trap. You think that's OK, Ismail? I think it's OK, but we need to test. Then, Mirzo and I noticed something exciting nearby. So Mirzo and I are just squashing down by the edge of this trickle of water and you can see the print of what could be a shepherd's dog. It's not big enough for a wolf, is it? No, no, it's not a wolf. What does Ismoyle think?

19:51Well, he's sure that this is not a wolf, so it's potentially a hyena. It's a long shot, but I'm starting to understand what drives Mirzo and Ismoyle to continue their search. If we see just one hyena, it'll all be worthwhile. But the more you get to know about this shy, persecuted animal, the more hopeless its plight seems. Back at base, Mirzo reveals yet another challenge to its survival. The striped hyena cups are exported as exotic pets, and some hyena parts are used as aphrodisiacs. We found many advertisements online. Like, what did you find? Look at this one. It's alarmingly easy to buy striped hyena parts, as Mirzo demonstrates.

20:43Is that an Instagram post? Yeah, I think it's teeth. Oh, they're the teeth for sale. Here, for example, in Russian language, there is a... Hyena musk. Yeah, it's a substance prepared from the hyena musk. And that's sold as an aphrodisiac? Yes. And here we can see a report from the organisation called Trafik, where it was documented that hyena skin was also sold. Gosh, so it's skins, teeth, glands, cubs. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. That's just what we could find with our limited skills.

21:22Part of Mirzo and Ismail's campaign to save the striped hyena here is to change the age-old belief that it's an enemy to humans. So today, we're visiting a tiny school in a village that doesn't even have a road to its name.

21:44The kids greet us with a rousing chorus. Most of them are ethnic Uzbeks, like many of the people in this border region. Almost all work with animals when they're not in class.

22:00That's Ismoyl giving these children a workshop, introducing the idea of conservation to them. One of the aspects of conservation efforts here is to get young people interested in wildlife, not just see wildlife as something to be used or killed. The kids are very shy, especially the girls, but they seem to engage with Ismoyle. Only two of them say they've ever seen a hyena. One is the 17-year-old boy.