PESHAWAR, May 20: Pakistan’s rich biodiversity — ranging from mangrove forests along the Arabian Sea to spectacular mountain ranges of Himalayas, Hindukush and Karakoram — faces serious threats as the world gears up to observe ‘International Day for Biodiversity’ on Monday.

The day is celebrated globally on May 22 to highlight the significance of conserving biodiversity and symbolises the collective will of the world to cooperate in halting and reversing the planet’s accelerating loss of biological and genetic resources.

This year’s theme for the Biodiversity Day is ‘Protecting Biodiversity in Drylands’.

A press release issued by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) here on Saturday termed Pakistan a country of tremendous uniqueness, with dramatic ecological diversity.

“Housing the second highest point of the world — K2 — at 8,611m to the (shores of) the Arabian Sea, it presents varied ecosystems, which support a large variety of biodiversity.”

It said the country constituted as many as 18 distinct habitats, supporting a rich variety of species that included more than 5,700 plant species, 194 species of mammals, 668 migratory and resident birds, 400 of marine and 125 freshwater fish, 174 of reptiles, 16 of amphibians and about 20,000 species of insects and terrestrial and freshwater invertebrates and 700 species of marine invertebrates.

The press release said that a major portion of Pakistan’s area, especially in Sindh and Balochistan, fell under the category of drylands, adding that such worldwide ecosystems received very erratic rainfall, and were very fragile.

“The transformation of habitats for human use, mostly agricultural, and overexploitation, including overgrazing, has led to degradation of up to 20 per cent of ecosystems in drylands with stark results: desertification and drought, endangering 2,311 species, the loss of over $40 billion a year in lost agricultural production and the resulting rise of social, economic, and political tensions.” Poverty, it said, had forced populations, dependent on natural resources, to overexploit the already marginal lands to sustain their livelihoods.