NATHIAGALI: The Lalazar Safari Park on the Nathiagali-Abbottabad road is located on the Lalazar mountaintop, which is at a height of 9,000 feet. To reach the park, one has to climb the winding track that passes through pine, fir and deodar forests, on foot or on horseback, with benches having been suitably located for rest on the way.
During my visit to the park on July 27, the zookeeper was absent. An eight-year-old child at the gate had the entry tickets, but visitors were entering the park without paying for them. The child said that his father, the only chowkidar, had gone for Friday prayers. He did not turn up during the three hours of my visit.
The Lalazar Safari Park is well-designed, but it could do with certain improvements that the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa wild life department should consider. The park houses only two leopards, which are kept inside a large compound with high barbed wires around it. The height of the place and the cool weather is ideal for Galiat leopards and more could be kept in the park. Only 50 or so leopards are left in the region as dozens have been killed by the people of the area over the years. In 2007, two leopards of the Galiat forests attacked 12 persons, killing seven. The provincial forest minister and the wild life department urged the people to kill leopards at sight and invited sharp shooters from Lahore to decimate them. In the killing spree that followed, about 15 leopards were killed and five trapped, caged and sent to zoos in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. In these zoos, leopards are confined to small cages and routinely die from the summer heat. To ensure the survival of the zoo-confined leopards, it would be better to shift them to the Lalazar Safari Park.
The park also houses a snow leopard that is kept in a cage. Snow leopards live at heights of around 15,000 feet. Therefore, the snow leopard at the park should be shifted to one of the national Parks in the Karakoram mountain range.
The six monkeys and five pheasants at the park are starving. There is no arrangement to feed them. If arrangements cannot be made to feed them, the pheasants should be shifted to the Dudial Pheasantry near Mansehra on the Karakoram Highway. There is an urgent need to have trained zookeepers that can take care of the few caged animals and birds.
Another suggestion is to add markhors from Baltistan and black bears from the Neelam Valley in Azad Kashmir to the wild life present at the park. If appropriately funded and properly managed, the Lalazar Safari Park could be turned into the most beautiful safari park in the country.
Ayaz Ahmed Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, July 31st, 2012.
