ISLAMABAD: Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB) Chairperson Rina Saeed Khan on Sunday said the board was educating people in 32 villages inside the Margalla Hills National Park (MHNP) during Friday prayers sermons to avoid leopard killing and habitat intrusion.
The IWMB after witnessing a thriving population of endangered Common Asian Leopards and other wildlife species expedited its conservation, education and preservation efforts to protect the world’s unique and living ecosystem nourishing along a human settlement, she told this news agency.
Ms Khan said the board used to hold training for the village population to avoid killing leopards by educating them on prevention and safety measures to abstain leopard encounters.
“Leopards are not interested in going into villages. There have been cases that goats have been attacked by leopards but that needs to be probed and we will work out some compensation mechanism as well. However, the prevailing economic conditions are not viable,” she said.
She added that urbanisation in the federal capital and population boom had extended human frontiers to wild areas. In 1980, Margalla Hills National Park was designated as a protected area and it was a small trip in the sprawling forest area as it was between the capital and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province.
She said in 2021 the board got full-fledged recruitment and last year it got proper management team including a director, deputy director, assistant director and an accounts officer.
“We don’t stop anyone from going to hiking trails, but we have to do coexistence with nature. You can see pheasants, jackals, barking deer and leopards.
“Leopards is an indicator of a good ecosystem whereas the visitors and trekkers should avoid venturing into the national park in the early morning and evening hours.”
The national park, she said, was divided into 20 blocks and 20 camera traps were installed so that the board could hold a study of leopard and other wild animals’ movement.
She said interestingly every leopard had a unique forehead pattern that helped in its identification.
“We have identified eight individual leopards that are the only ones captured in the cameras. Leopards, both male and female, live in separate territories and only unite for matings,” she added.
She said there was no poaching and hunting in the MHNP whereas only Shah Allah Ditta and Quaid-i-Azam University area strips were vulnerable to hunting.
In 1970, these hills were barren and it was called military grasslands and there were no big trees at that time, she said, adding: “Capital Development Authority (CDA) did plantation to green that area but population and housing pressure is threatening it’s nature. Margalla Avenue will now give way to the development of more residential sectors.”
She said CDA, Revenue Department, IWMB and the Survey of Pakistan were working on the demarcation of the boundary of the MHNP that would help control encroachments into the protected area.
Commenting on hotels polluting the MHNP, Ms Khan said the Islamabad High Court (IHC) had declared Monal and others as illegal hotels in MHNP.
“They (hotels) are dumping their sewage in the national park. We need to understand that it’s not Murree and we do not need to have big hotels. We want to preserve and protect this thriving wildlife,” the chairperson said.
Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2023