As the population of Pakistan continues to expand at an alarmingly rapid rate, and as the economic situation worsens for ordinary people who increasingly find it hard to make ends meet, so too does the pressure on all forms of wildlife which already suffers very badly from climate change and related issues.

Human intrusion in the form of city, town and village expansion with associated loss of agricultural, forest and other lands, along with pollution of waterways, all have an adverse effect on wildlife, be this in animal, bird, fish, insect or plant form.

Yet, very few people seem to care that this vast loss of ecosystems and their inhabitants will ultimately affect human life too.

Let us look at fishing at our rivers, for example, most people adore eating freshly caught freshwater fish, yet give little thought to where it actually comes from and whether or not it is fished in a sustainable manner. In this respect, there are fishermen who abide by the rules and regulations and there are fishermen who don’t. Plus, there are increasing number of poachers who clandestinely catch fish in vast numbers, by using fishing nets with very small mesh — this means that they sweep up baby fish along with adults even though they are way too small to eat.

They also catch fish by dynamiting rivers and killing everything else in the vicinity too. This is extremely worrying indeed, poisoning the rivers to kill the fish which will, quite obviously, contain traces of whatever poison was used to kill them with, when the fish is sold off to unsuspecting customers in shops and, ultimately, ends up on the dining table!

These illegal ways of catching fish result in a vast amount of ecological damage and have, especially in the case of one particular breed, ‘tor putitora’ or ‘mahseer’ as it is locally known. It is a ‘sporting’ fish, because professional anglers have a great, if difficult, time in catching them by legal means. It has been reduced from being relatively common in some rivers to being an endangered species now.

It is true to say that moves are afoot, instigated by a band of dedicated environmentalists, to protect the mahseer fish remaining in the Poonch River of Azad Kashmir. But even this is hampered by the fact that contractors are hard at work, around the year, extracting gravel and stones from the river bed in areas where these fish like to breed, so this particular fish conservation programme faces an extremely difficult task.

The major problem with conserving the fish in our rivers is that the authorities, from local all the way up to government level, are not particularly interested in the subject and, as with so many other issues, will possibly only pay attention when it is too late.