LAHORE, April 1: A national park is a place set aside to protect natural and scientific areas of national and international significance for research, educational and recreational use.

This definition might be true, but not in the case of the Margalla Hills National Park (MHNP).

Established in 1980, Margalla was declared a national park under the Islamabad Wildlife Ordinance, 1979, for the protection, preservation, conservation and management of wildlife. It covers a total area of 15,833 hectares. It comprises parts of Margalla foothills, Rawal Lake and Shakar Parian.

Under the Islamabad Wildlife Ordinance, 1979, killing and capturing wild animals are prohibited. It also prohibits interfering with wildlife, its habitats and consumptive use of natural resources.

Even after its declaration as a national park, the MHNP faces a number of environmental threats like a proposed chairlift project, human settlements, forest fires, littering, water contamination, illegal hunting, road constructions and widening, stone-quarrying, streetlights, alien invasive species, water games at Rawal Lake, water pollution from Rawal catchments and air and noise pollution.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) took a group of Lahore-based environment journalists to the MHNP to provide them an opportunity to have the first-hand knowledge of environmental threats being faced by the park. The WWF also arranged a meeting of the journalists with the Capital Development Authority (CDA) environment director-general Mazhar Husain, a forester, to have the official point of view as well.

Replying to queries by the journalists regarding road widening, streetlights, stone-quarrying, a proposed chairlift, and other threats to the park, Mr Husain said the Margalla Hills National Park faced no ‘major’ threat. He said since the park was situated by the side of two major cities —- Rawalpindi and Islamabad, there were ‘certain pressures.’

About implications of widening and installation of streetlights at the park, he said the CDA had not yet done any study on the wildlife impact, adding this would not cause ‘much harm’ to the environment. He said there were only six to seven turning points where roads were being widened.

On the insistence of a questioner that with the installation of streetlights motorists would throng the park at night and disturb wildlife there, he said there were possibilities of that. But if that happened, it would be on a negligible scale, he said.

At that point, Dr Ghulam Akbar of the WWF intervened and said though road building or widening was against the law, it was tolerable to some extent. But as far as streetlights were concerned, they were intolerable and in clear violation of the law, he said, adding it would restrict free movement of wild animals and change their social behaviour. Animals exposed to light could get themselves killed by traffic, he said.

To a question about a CDA plan to install a chairlift from zoo to Murghzar at the park, Mr Husain said they had just done the rough alignment of the project, but not yet studied its impact on the park. “We have even not carried out a feasibility study of the project,” he said, adding experts would be engaged for the purpose.

He said the CDA was basically an urban development authority. Because of nature conservation areas around the capital city, a master plan had been prepared for the first time in the CDA’s history to cope with environmental needs of these areas.

He said the CDA had a Rawal Park where people were invited to plant memorial plants, calling the project a success.