HYDERABAD: Coastal community activists, who previously contributed in planting mangroves near their villages, have been very much concerned on the currently ongoing deforestation driven by commercial greed.
Asif Bhatti, president of native indigenous fishermen association (Nifa), representing island communities in Karachi, called the destruction of mangrove trees a part of land grabbing.
“Increasing urbanisation is eating away the coastal land, where forests used to exist long ago,” he said. “We have caught such outsiders several times near our island villages with the support of coastal agencies’ personnel, and seized boats carrying fuel wood.”
But, the practice of cutting trees was still going on, Bhatti added.
Land reclamation was the ultimate goal in his view, and even locals might be involved, “although, locals do not clean living trees”, he added. Some fishermen and women identify dried trees, which they collect for using as fuel domestically, because most families do not have access to gas supply.
Therefore, Bhatti said it was land mafia that was involved in cutting mangroves to take over beaches for commercial purposes.
It has been happening despite the fact that Sindh government in its notification issued in 2012 has declared mangroves as protected zone from Sir Creek to Sands Pit, Keamari. In fact many government and semi-government departments have land ownership in these lands near Karachi.
These authorities might use their land for any development purpose, but in principal they should follow the law and refrain from cutting mangroves.
Bhatti, who is also a director of Fishermen Cooperative Society (FCS), asked why the government’s forest department officials adopted silence on this issue, especially since the depletion of mangrove forests made the coastline vulnerable to sea storms.
He accused the federal as well as provincial government authorities of having an eye on the land that belonged to the island villages.
“Wherever the authorities need more land for further development they reclaim the sea by cutting mangroves for the purpose, leaving coastal communities vulnerable to face the pressures of the sea,” the Nifa leader said.
“We previously tried to motivate island people to plant mangroves along our villages like Shamspir Island, but later we saw how certain people were on a rampage, cutting trees around our villages,” he added.
Locals still recall the gory incident in which two community mangrove protectors were murdered at Kaka Village, Hawks Bay. Certain land grabbers had sent a message to the environmentalists to keep silent and let them continue cutting mangroves for taking over land, they said.
Nawaz Dablo, a fisherman from Dabla Muhalla, near Rehri Mayan of Karachi, who goes fishing with other crew members on a boat, has witnessed outside people cleaning older trees near their routes.
He said fishing boats always take shelter along mangrove forests at night to avoid any untoward situation in the sea.
But now, Dablo said people were cleaning these mangrove trees, which might cause problems for boats as well as people living nearby.
He counts hundreds of fishermen families residing at different creeks like Phitti, Khahi, Khudi, Patyani and others.
He also said that some of the local fishermen were involved in this process. They left the cut trees to dry out in the open, and later used boats to transport the chopped wood for selling mainly to poultry feed factories as fuel. “Local bakeries too use the chopped wood as fuel,” he added.
In winter the rate of this wood was around Rs400-500/maund, while in summer the rate drops to Rs200-300/maund.
“We do not know how much they (poultry feed manufacturers and others) offer to these people for cutting valuable trees for them, but it is happening without any check,” Dablo said. Reports gathered from coastal villages show that it was an open secret that the trees were cut at night, and fishing boats loaded with mangrove wood not only from coastal villages but remote areas as well.
However, the officials concerned of the forest department took no action in this regard.
Elderly people plead that since they were traditional custodians of natural resources like mangrove forests, they never engaged in such a crime. They justified that cleaning mangroves to use as animal fodder was not harmful, and they have been doing this for generations.
Local activists said mangrove forests near famous Phitti and Korangi creeks were shields not only for the coastal people, but also for important commercial instalments, which might be exposed to natural disasters in case of deforestation.
Mangroves are breeding grounds for various fish and crustaceans; they provide protection against heat waves; and absorb a large amount of carbon dioxide.
Akhtar Shaikh, another community activist claims to have started plantation and conservation of mangroves on a wide area with local people. They calculate per acre requires 1,200 plants, which they collect from natural nurseries in mangrove forests.
He believes that traditionally community people do not want to clean trees, and it was the outsiders who were involved in deforestation. “If it continues, these islands will fall victim to sea erosion,” he said, pleading the authorities to rehabilitate the mangrove forests.