Protecting a national park

EDITORIAL: National parks serve to protect and conserve ecological biodiversity only when left undisturbed by commercial activity. In August of last year the Supreme Court had to intervene and order that the restaurants located in the Margalla Hills National Park be demolished with minimal disruption to flora and fauna.

Also, the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB) was directed to assume control of the premises with support from the Capital Development Authority.

IWMB, said the court, would consider how best to utilise the mountain ridge previously occupied by restaurants. But influential persons seem to have not given up plans to use the place for money-making purposes even though this amounts to superseding the apex court’s verdict.

Former IWMB chairperson Rina Saeed Khan, accompanied by lawyer Umer Ijaz Gillani, held a press conference the other day, where she alleged that despite court orders some elements with vested interests were hell-bent on resuming commercial activities inside the wildlife sanctuary.

Furthermore, she said various tricks were applied to stop the board from doing the restoration work, and finally the government dissolved the board, reconstituting it with bureaucrats. This only goes on to confirm that the authorities have had an ulterior motive for making that change.

She rightly argued that if the government wanted to form a new board, it should have appointed people with a background in environment protection, who were at least committed to protecting the environment. Besides as advocate Gillani pointed out, under the Islamabad Nature Conservation and Wildlife Management Act, 2024, the new board should comprise nine members, including private sector environmentalists.

Instead of making the board an independent, professionally sound and vibrant body, the authorities appear to think of the national park as a prime real estate property rather than land reserve for preserving natural animal habitats and ecological balance of the area.

Human activity has already done much harm to the ecosystem. The Lai Nullah, for instance, that rises from the Margalla Hills in Islamabad and flows through Rawalpindi, once a clean water stream with plenty of fish in it has been reduced to a sewage drain.

As per a notification issued last week by the ministry of climate change, the IWMB members are to comprise top officials from that ministry, environment member of the CDA, and a senior officer nominated by Islamabad mayor, or the head of Municipal Corporation as well as deputy commissioner of the capital city.

None of them, with the possible exception of CDA member, appears to have a good grounding in the issues they are supposed to address. The reconstituted body will not achieve much unless it acts in concert with experts in the field.

Those at the helm who are willing to allow commercial activities in the heart of the Margalla Hills must not forget that national parks, aside from promoting conservation, play a crucial role in preventing and mitigating environmental degradation.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025