PESHAWAR, July 28: It is due to ill-planned development projects, inappropriate measures and apathy on the part of the government agencies concerned to conserve habitat that natural resources in the NWFP are under threat of getting depleted at an alarmingly high rate.

“The pressure on natural resources and environmental amenities has been increasing at an alarming rate due to which the quality of the resources and life supporting system including land, water, air, etc., is declining rapidly (in the province),” contained an official document of the provincial government.

The document was prepared in connection with the formulation of an uplift project launched during the current fiscal year to ensure proper use of land in the NWFP to help preserve fertile agricultural land.

The environmental issues, the document said, include deforestation, depletion of range and grazing lands, soil erosion, river pollution, conversion of prime agricultural land into commercial areas, industrial pollution, salinity and ill-planned sprawl of urban centres.

It said the province had lost 0.4 per cent of the agricultural land owing to water logging and 3.1 per cent due to salinity and attributed this loss to the poor farming and irrigation practices.

The document contained that out of five million hectares of grazing land

in the NWFP, about 4.3 million hectares were so depleted that there appear to

be hardly any signs of ever green vegetation.

“Deforestation is causing the depletion of fauna diversity and threatening rare species in the NWFP, particularly snow leopard, markhor, grey wolf, Himalayan ibex, Himalayan musk deer and cheer pheasant,” stated the document.

A development planner of the NWFP government talking to Dawn on Saturday said the unabated deforestation in the rich Hazara and Malakand regions of the province had triggered river pollution as a result of soil erosion putting the country’s water management projects under tremendous threat— a point also mentioned in the official document.

Between 150-165 tons of soil per hectare is being lost every year only in the catchment area of upstream Tarbela water reservoir- country’s largest water management programme.

The document noted with concern that “the indiscriminate use of fertilizers and inappropriate use of pesticides have polluted the under-ground water enormously”.

Whereas the surface water resources are also highly vulnerable to pollution as in the case of Kabul river, major sources of pollution were untreated sewage and affluent from cities, towns, industrial units, the document said.

The report said: “The mushroom growth of private hotels and restaurants along with River Swat has been a source of giving birth to numerous environmental issues”.