Back to news
11 Jul 2016 | News

Angora Rabbits Improving Livelihoods in Pakistan

1 min Read

70% Complete

An Angora rabbit farming pilot initiative was launched as a high value livelihood source for marginalised communities, particularly women in mountain areas of Pakistan, with the support of the International Centre of Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC). The pilot was initiated in 2010. PARC established its first model Angora rabbitry  at the National Agricultural Research Centre (NARC) by importing 25 white Angora rabbits from Kathmandu, Nepal.  Now NARC rabbitry maintains up to 200 Angora rabbits including three coloured breeds — German Angora, French Angora, and Himalayan Angora, covering jet black, brown and grey colours. PARC conducted a successful assessment of Angora rabbit farming in Pakistan under various ecological conditions to developing an Angora rabbit up-scaling package for the mountain communities in Pakistan.

To date, PARC has distributed dozens of Angora rabbit units (4 females and 2 males per unit) among the women farmers in Murree hills of Punjab and Hazara Division of Khyber Pakhtunkhawa (KPK). With the technical support of PARC, the government of KPK established another Angora rabbitry at Livestock Experimentation Station (LES), Jaba, District Mansehra to meet the Angora rabbit units demand from the mountain parts of KPK. PARC recently announced a supply of Angora rabbit units to further strengthen local livelihoods in the ICIMOD project area in the Upper Indus Basin — Upper Gojal, Gilgit as well as to Forest, Wildlife and Environment Department (FWED), Skardu, Baltistan.

PARC has made progress on value chain development of Angora wool and has successfully introduced different market products like Angora yarn, threads, Angora shawls, socks, etc.

Stay current

Stay up to date on what’s happening around the HKH with our most recent publications and find out how you can help by subscribing to our mailing list.

Sign Up

Related content

Continue exploring this topic

11 Sep 2017 Gender in Koshi
Why China should Include a Gender Perspective in its Climate Change Policies

In Haitang, off-farm wage labour outside the community has, for some years, been an important income-generating strategy. As the drought ...

24 Feb 2021 News
Deepening regional cooperation for climate action: HKH High-Level Task Force convenes

The first meeting of the HKH High-Level Task Force took place virtually on 22 February 2021. ...

10 Dec 2015 News
HICAP South-South Dialogue on Managing Wetlands in the Himalayas

ICIMOD, as a regional intergovernmental learning and knowledge sharing centre in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, has taken various steps ...

29 Jul 2015 News
A practical lesson for Bhutanese farmers

As part of support for Rural Livelihoods and Climate Change Adaptation Programme (Himalica), a hands-on training on sustainable land management ...

13 Jul 2015 Atmosphere Initiative
ICIMOD supports helicopter relief and rescue missions

Within hours after the earthquake struck Nepal on 25 April 2015, help from overseas started arriving at Kathmandu airport. Soon ...

3 Sep 2019 KDKH
The KDKH’s transboundary working group to study impacts of GLOF events in the Koshi basin

In June 2019, a study that used declassified military satellite data showed that a staggering

20 Nov 2018 Atmosphere Initiative
Valley Mayors Commit to Clean Valley Air

The two-hour event included experts’ briefings on the current scientific understanding of air pollution, on the possible solutions that municipalities ...