ISLAMABAD: Due to a lack of coordination between officials of the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB) and the environment wing of the CDA/MCI, a group of poachers hunted six geese near Rawal Dam.

Field monitor of the IWMB, Farhan Baloch, told Dawn that he along with six other staffers on a tip-off raided the dam area near Banigala.

“We saw a group of around 10 poachers who had hunted six gees,” he said, adding the CDA/MCI team did not turn up. “A deputy director of the wildlife wing of the CDA asked us on telephone not to conduct a raid at the reservoir,” he claimed. The field monitor said he also called the police and a CDA officer’s vehicle was spotted in the area.

He said the IWMB team confiscated the six geese for a while but the poachers snatched them and left the area. When contacted, deputy director MCI Mahmood Alam said the IWMB did not have the mandate to conduct a raid on their own.

“If they had any information, they should have contacted us,” he said, adding when the matter was brought into his notice the poachers had fled the area.

An official of the CDA requesting not to be named said a proper inquiry should be conducted into the matter.

The CDA and IWMB have been at loggerhead over the control of the environment regional wing which is supposed to look after the affairs of Margalla Hills National Park. The CDA employees recently also obtained a stay order from a local court against new recruitments in the IWMB.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2018