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| Pai forest on verge of extinction |
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Tuesday, November 10, 2009
By Ali Raza
LAHORE: Once known for royal visitors and high-profile personalities, the Pai forest in the Nawabshah district, Sindh, is facing serious threat of extinction due to continuous intrusion of land grabbers and water scarcity.
This was revealed to a delegation of the Forum of Environment Journalist Pakistan (FEJP) during a visit to the Pai forest along with a team of WWF-Pakistan. It is pertinent to mention here that Nawabshah is the hometown of President Asif Ali Zardari.
The forest, which is spread over 1,933 hectors, is rich in flora and fauna with diverse wildlife. It is a protected area and a part of the Indus eco-region that has been identified as one of 40 biologically richest eco-regions in the world.
Officials of the WWF-Pakistan working for the conservation of this centuries old man-made forest revealed that around 250 acres of the forest has been encroached upon by the influential of the area while the Sindh government allotted 150 acres to the Army and 140 acres to the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council, clearly violating the spirit of ‘protected area’.
According to the available figures, there are 23 villages around the forest, having a population of over 30,000 that adds extra pressure on the forest because locals also grab land to cultivate cash crops. This is because their traditional livelihood based on livestock is reduced and does not pay well in comparison to cash crops.
It was also revealed that the local villagers were also found involved in cutting of forest for fuel-wood, significantly contributing to the destruction of the forest and ecosystem.
The Pai forest is also known as a riverine forest but, presently, water-scarcity is also a major issue contributing to the slow death of this beautiful forest. Officials of WWF-Pakistan said that after the construction of flood protection bund on the Indus River, the forest has turned into an irrigated forest. It has been cut off from the riverine areas and made an inland forest. This inland forest is situated outside the river embankments.
Hence, its reliance on regular inundation from the Indus River has been shifted to control supply of water from the Rohri Canal.
It was also revealed that 30 cusecs of water per month is approved for this forest to keep it alive but the supply of water is not more than 7 to 8 cusecs per month, which is only irrigating around 25 percent of the forest.
The agony of water-starved forest is exacerbated by plantation of eucalyptus trees, water-consuming specie as the Sindh Forest Department planted these trees without any future vision. Officials of the WWF-Pakistan claimed that the trees were planted to show quick progress of work of the Sindh Forest Department in the forest.
The seriousness of the Sindh government towards one of the important eco-regions of the world can be gauged from the fact that not a single staffer of the Sindh Forest Department was seen at the site. There are ruins of a forest department’s staff colony that shows that, in the distant past, there used to be forest department staff in the Pai Forest. Abandoned rusty tube wells, partly used for irrigating the forest, are also a common sight, reflecting the commitment of the Sindh government toward conserving the important ecosystem of the region.
There are no practical efforts taken by the Sindh Forest Department for the conservation and sustainable management of wildlife and forest’s habitat. Important wildlife of the area includes hog deer, partridges, Asiatic jackals, jungle cat, porcupine, wild boar, snakes etc.
According to the WWF official, hunting was permitted through licenses to protect indigenous wildlife population, but the limit was rarely adhered to and indiscriminating hunting was common. This posed a threat to the population of hog deer and partridges. Hence, for the last over two year, no license has been issued for hunting.
Some locals told that the number of hog deer, gray partridges, wild boars, jackals, jungle cats, Bengal foxes and mongooses were fast declining in the Pai forest due to poaching by influential people. They claimed that only a few hog deer were left in the entire forest. A large number of hog deer have been hunted by feudal lords and bureaucrats, while high-profile foreign personalities, particularly from the Middle East, are also invited to hunt animals in this game reserve.
Gray partridges are being over hunted, and the influential of the area break the sanctioned hunting limit often. Every year, new beats are made in the forest for hunting. This involves levelling the land in selected forest areas and planting new trees. Cotton is grown in these levelled areas, since pests which attack cotton tend to attract partridges, who feed on them, they said, adding there were now hardly any black partridges at all in the forest.
To lessen the pressure on the forest from the local communities, the WWF-P introduced Community Based Organisations (CBOs) and, at present, around 14 CBOs are working in villages adjacent to the forest, which are funded by the Dutch government. The purpose is to create awareness about the importance of the forest ecosystem and provide alternate means of income and source of energy. CBOs are providing vocational training to females and running bio-gas plants in different villages around the forest.
The Nawabshah district coordination officer (DCO) admitted all the above-mentioned facts, but said the PAI forest was controlled by the Sindh Forest Department, so he could not take measures to stop the ongoing land grabbing in the protected area. He also showed his inability to resolve the issue of release of sanctioned water to the forest.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
