Protection should be given to the Department of Wildlife Conservation

By Ghani Mahmood Kasuri

There are all kinds of departments in Pakistan which claim to solve the problems according to their resources, but the people of Pakistan know that despite having the resources, these departments create problems for the people and make legal people illegal and illegal people. provide legal protection

These departments include one department, the Punjab Wildlife Department

First of all, let me introduce this department

Since Rakim is a hunter himself, I have a special connection with this department

The Punjab Wildlife and Parks Department came into existence in 1934 during the British rule

From 1934 to 1973, this department functioned under various departments, but in 1973 it was renamed as Punjab Wildlife and Parks Department and then this department started functioning as Wildlife, Forest Department and Fisheries Department.

That is, protection of forests, protection of wild animals, birds and protection and breeding of fish is the responsibility of this department and zoos and parks are also under their management.

  The head of this department is Director General under whose shadow one Director and 10 Deputy Directors work across Punjab.

Its Act was amended after 1974 in 2007 and again in 2010.

Like the rest of the country, hunting season has started in Punjab

It is necessary for the hunters that they can hunt only under the license issued by the Punjab Wildlife Department

But 80 percent of our people hunt all kinds of things openly without a hunting license, which is not hidden from anyone.

The resources that this department should get are not available with this department

  Each tehsil has a game warden and a team based on inspectors whose job is to stop poaching, but if we are honest, so few people working in such a large area is nothing less than a joke. Faticher vehicle and hundreds of kilometers of area is not a joke

Poachers take advantage of this opportunity and destroy the wildlife

 When the license is issued by this department, nothing is told to the license holder that such and such birds and animals can be hunted and not so and so. There is money so that a law-abiding shooting wildlife license holder does not know which bird is becoming rare and which is common.

Which days hunting is prohibited and which days are allowed

When does the breeding season start and when does it end?

Which bird belongs to our country and which bird is a guest?

And how many people can hunt how many birds in a day with how many guns on a license

Because on the Internet, dozens of pictures of hunted birds can be seen in the hands of a person, even car bonnets are filled with rare birds.

Searching all this on the internet does not provide any specific information

My most important suggestion to this department as a columnist and a registered hunter is to provide a literature at the time of license issuance with all the rules and regulations written on it so that the hunters are fully aware and an effort should be made to ensure that this communication is clear. In the era of the registered hunters are kept informed by adding them to the WhatsApp group and telling them which bird, animal you can take a viral photo on social media and which one you can't because it is too much. It has been seen that a fine is imposed on the basis of a viral photo on social media, although the hunter who gets the license does not need to do illegal work.

If he had not respected the law, he would have been part of the 80% of poachers and saved his annual license fee.

This negligence of the department is forcing the hunters to hunt illegally, while on the other hand, the landlords and elites are allowed to hunt in the prohibited hunting areas without arms and wildlife shooting license. By which the rights of common poor and helpless hunters are lost and thus this department is making legal people illegal and illegal people legal.

Also an oversight is that rare bird hunting is permitted and air gun hunting is completely banned, depriving the common poor of such important and health-maintaining exercise as hunting.

On the other hand, with semi-automatic repeaters, people shoot dozens of birds by firing half a dozen cartridges at a time and are killing birds.

It should be noted that the Pakistani court has banned hunting with decoys and hunting with airguns in 2021, but tall people are doing all this openly.

I request the government to remove the ban on hunting with springer air guns while maintaining the ban on PCP air guns (pre-charged pneumatics) and the use of hundreds of bird catchers by setting nets and especially egg potash. At the same time, the people who push the birds to death should be surrounded

Every citizen of the state of Pakistan has the right to hunt, so the poor should not be deprived of this hobby and exercise for the benefit of certain people.

If we talk about the performance of the department, then two years ago, under the leadership of the then Director General Punjab Muhammad Naeem Bhatti, the department was quite active and better, but now there is no significant improvement, so the department should be activated and the officers Like Naeem Bhatti, checking and monitoring of sub-officers and staff should be made mandatory so that there is no breeding of birds and the people of the department should work diligently so that hunters can hunt after getting all the information.