CHITRAL: The people of Chitral have demanded check on the relentless and unrestrained use of pastures and highlands for organising sports activities and festivals to save their natural beauty and avoid environmental degradation.

Dr Inayatullah Faizi, former project manager of a Chitral-based environmental project of International Union for Conservation of Nature, told Dawn that a number of pastures and highlands in Chitral were facing threats by the unchecked activities of festivals and fairs.

He said legislation both on federal and provincial levels had been made for the protection of environment in the form of Pakistan Environmental Protection Act, 1997 and KP Environmental Protection Act, 2014, but their implementation was nowhere.

Faizi said the laws contained sections protecting the environment of pastures from being disrupted by human activities on mass scale, implying thereby that holding of fairs and festivals in such places cannot be allowed to safeguard the fragile ecosystem there.

Environmentalist says implementation of relevant laws nowhere to be seen

Dr Faizi added that negative impacts of holding fairs and festivals in the highlands and pastures have started emerging in Shandur, Kagh Lasht, Broghil and Madak Lasht over last couple of decades.

Citing the example of Shandur, he said since the festival began in early 1980s, the pasture situated at an altitude of 12,000 feet had suffered debacle in its ecosystem where process of desertification had started to set in while its beneficiary communities had started to suffer economically.

He said over the last four decades, the 1.5-kilometre-long and 0.7km wide perennial lake in the centre of the pasture had almost reduced to its two-third.

He said that the pasture containing the lake and the mountain slopes on four sides was the habitat of mammals and birds, including snow leopard, Himalayan ibex, grey wolf, brown bear, booted eagles, golden eagles and Himalayan Griffon vultures as well as a number of shrubs, but the area has lost many of these species to unfriendly changes in their habitat.

He regretted that the residents of Laspur Valley, the beneficiary of the pasture, had suffered economic losses as the population of yaks being grazed in the pasture perished due to consumption of solid waste generated during the festival, while the spring waters are also contaminated.

Faizi added that the number of yaks per household in Laspur Valley had decreased, which people sold every year in the market for hard cash to purchase commodities of daily use as farming is limited by extremely cold weather.

“This is common situation in all the spots of Chitral, Swat and Dir as well as Gilgit-Baltistan where fairs and festivals are held in the name of promoting tourism, but they adversely affect local people socially and economically. Besides, health issues have also cropped up there,” he said, adding that the relevant laws did not permit such activities.

Hamid Mir, an environmentalist, who worked as consultant with UNDP for many years, said the large crowds gathered at festivals caused degradation of vegetation, reducing carbon sequestration thereby contributing to climate change and the increasing frequency of torrential rains in the nearby valleys.

He said the Broghil and Madak Lasht valleys and the Shandur pasture have a hypersensitive weak ecosystem due to their proximity to glaciers, and large crowds of people can prove catastrophic impact, while loss of vast tracts of peatland has already been reported in Broghil due to such activities.

Published in Dawn, June 10th, 2025