NAGARPARKAR: Deforestation of the Karoonjhar hills, which surround Nagarparkar town of Tharparkar district, threatened the very existence of critically endangered vultures whose population has further reduced over the past couple of years, it emerged on Saturday.
While the government has placed a ban on deforestation, the activity goes on mainly to collect the precious rasin of a shrub, gugraal, (also called gugal) that is transported to Karachi where it’s processed before being exported due to its medicinal properties.
The activity has not only deprived a large area of the precious flora but has also damaged the habitat of vultures.
During a visit to the Malji Wando village in the Nagarparkar area, which is the only habitat of the critically endangered long-billed vultures in Pakistan, it was found that nests of vultures had been damaged and their eggs broken due to the unregulated human activity in the area.
Villagers said the vultures once lived in thousands were rarely seen at present.
“Once covered with dense vegetation of mainly gugraal, the Karoonjhar hills have lost their beauty over the years. Influential people are using the less privileged to destroy these plants to get its resin that helps them earn a lot of money,” Moti Meghwar, the head of community-based non-governmental volunteer organisation Parkar Foundation (PF), told a group of journalists during their visit to his village in Nagarparkar.
Mr Meghwar has planted saplings of the plant (Commiphora wightii) in his one-room NGO office, its yard shared by a pair of peafowl. “I have grown them here because I fear that the plant will no longer exist in the wild after two years,” he said, adding that the plant was good for livestock health and was also used as an adhesive and in some religious rituals.
According to locals, a chemical is used to speed up the process of resin secretion from the plant. As the plant loses its resin, it dries up and dies. Each labourer is paid Rs200 a day by some influential people, who, they claim, are supported by forest officials in this destruction.