Forests, as we all know, are under threat all over the world and their rapid loss is contributing to climate change in a massive way including — like it or not — right here in the ‘land of the pure’ where extreme weather events are becoming the norm. The ‘protected’ forests of the Murree area are in no way exempt from the depredations of the timber mafia and are further damaged by the pyromaniacal tendencies of the indigenous population for whom possession of a box of matches provides an irresistible temptation to create hell on earth. These two activities generally take place on the sly. Therefore, it took me a little while to figure out what was going on when I, along with anyone else who happened to be on the ‘old’ road between Bhurban and Tret one morning earlier this week, witnessed an unusual sight. Gangs of men, plus a few women and some grubby children, were raking up heaps of fallen pine needles and stuffing them into sacks. Periodically, the sacks were heaped on the roadside and there were dozens and dozens of such heaps.
“Why are they doing this?” I asked the cab driver hired to take me down to Islamabad and back. “This is large scale so it isn’t for use as animal bedding.”
He thought for a minute or two then ventured, “Maybe selling it to a chipboard factory.”
“Where is the nearest such factory? It must be an awfully long way away from here and I don’t think pine needles can be made into chipboard.”
“No, not chipboard then,” he replied. “Someone must be buying it though, otherwise all these people wouldn’t be collecting it and look … over there … that truck is fully loaded with them and those other trucks are waiting their turn.”
“Stop! I’m going to ask them what they’re doing,” I instructed.
“I don’t think you should,” he advised. “They might not like it.”
“Hmm,” I considered. “Don’t stop right here where there are so many of them working. Stop when I see just a couple of them on their own.”
We drove on, passing large gangs of labourers engrossed in raking and sweeping the forest floor clean, shoveling inches deep layers of pine needles into the endless supply of sacks. I wondered if someone intended selling the rich mix as high-priced organic compost, if they intended repacking it into plastic sacks wearing fancy labels declaring ‘imported’.
“Stop!” I instructed having spotted a lone man using a broken wooden rake to heap pine needles at the side of the road.
“I’m cleaning the road,” said the man who turned out to be a genuine road sweeper, not part of the mass pine-needle-collection brigade. “I’m just cleaning up to help stop people setting the forest on fire when they throw burning cigarette ends out of car windows. I’m not involved in what those others are doing.”
“What are they doing?” I asked.
“They’ve all been hired to collect fallen pine needles. Some contractor is paying them. He supplied the trucks too. The stuff is all sold off to poultry farms to put on their roofs to keep the chickens cool in the hot weather.”
I’ve seen poultry farms up here in the hills doing this but, up until now, it had been a small-scale practice, not a commercial venture transporting the pine needles to sell down in the plains which, while it may be common sense, is another death knell as far as the forests are concerned. Checking around here and there afterwards, I learnt that the forest department as such is not involved in this new industry but that some of its staff definitely is. The danger lies in the fact that uncontrolled removal of debris from the forest floor stops soil regeneration, prevents self-seeded wild plants from establishing themselves, and has a knock on, detrimental effect on all forms of wildlife. Of more concern still, is the increase in incidents of landslip during periods of heavy rain/snow, as runoff water, having nothing to absorb it, rushes downhill unchecked. Messing up the environment is a pastime at which human beings excel and, if there is a new way to do it, trust us Pakistanis to find it!
With environmental issues lying heavy on my heart, I was in a somewhat subdued mood as I worked through my list of necessary chores in the overheated city: A replacement computer mouse, the last one having expired in a flash of red light, DVDs to back up files and photographs, a larger cage for multiplying budgies and then foodstuffs, which I decided to buy at the nearest bazaar as I didn’t have the energy to shop around
Rs60 for one single banana (“Imported, Madam”), Rs300 for 1 kilo of black cherries (“The Swat situation, you know”), and Rs150 per kilo for papaya (“You do know how it is in Karachi these days, don’t you?”) is how one up-market fruit and vegetable store tried to justify its outrageous prices. A grocery store a couple of doors along the row was asking Rs420 for a dozen brown eggs (flown in from the UAE), Rs180 for a shriveled up avocado (South African) and Rs150 each for tiny grapefruits with a pinkish tinge and completely unknown origin (I understood this meant they were from a country we do not openly trade with). These two stores and the few others in this little enclave, were doing a roaring trade although, not, I hasten to add, with me!
Their customers were largely affluent Pakistanis with a light smattering of foreigners for whom, with their hardship posting pay packets, price is not an issue. But this is not the point; the point being: why on earth is Pakistan importing edibles such as bananas, eggs, avocados and grapefruit all of which we happen to produce ourselves and all of which we happen to export? For the doubting Thomases amongst you, Pakistan produces some fairly decent avocados these days and, way back in the late 1950s, even won prizes for top quality avocados at an international event in Sri Lanka, which is well-known for top quality avocados of its own. We also import butter, yoghurt, milk, jam, fancy coloured capsicums (These being nothing more than ‘raw’ green ones which have been left on the plant to ripen), cucumbers, apples, pears and an unbelievable range of other foodstuffs which are already either produced or manufactured here. While I am not advocating the controlled strictures of a Communist state, it does seem ludicrous to be pushing indigenous businesses to the wall, thus increasing unemployment and downright poverty, plus, there is the huge carbon footprint stamped on imports to be considered too.
Having done my shopping in Jikkali Gali where bananas cost Rs80 a dozen, double yolk eggs Rs70 a dozen and neither cherries nor avocados were to be seen, I crawled home just as the sun disappeared in a blaze of crimson glory behind the forest clad slope at the back of my little house. To the east, someone had got hold of a box of matches and set an entire hillside up in flames. What is left of our precious environment is under full-scale attack from all sides unless someone, somewhere, somehow, reverses the screw.
Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, June 19th, 2011.
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