Bad news for bustards again

Pakistan is the only country to allow the killing of Houbara Bustard

The annual slaughter of the migratory Houbara Bustard is about to begin again despite these birds being a protected species under a covenant that Pakistan is a signatory to. This has become concretised as an annual event, with members of the royal families of the Gulf States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia coming to Pakistan to blow the bustards out of the sky in the mistaken belief that their flesh is aphrodisiac. The Houbara Bustard is not a challenging game bird as it is slow both in the air and on the ground, and in the last season that permits were issued for, Saudi Prince Fahd bin Sultan slew 2,100 birds in a single three-week holiday in Chaghi district of Balochistan. The hunting of the Houbara Bustard is permitted with falcons but they are rarely used by the hunters, who prefer the opportunities for mass killing offered by rifles and shotguns. Pakistan is the only country to allow the killing of these birds.

Unsurprisingly, the World Wide Fund for Nature in Pakistan is deeply unhappy with this state of affairs, and is not afraid to say so. The foreign ministry is the responsible agency and issues permits and allocates hunting areas, this year, 17 in all. The WWF has lobbied for the practice to be curtailed to no apparent effect. The government argues that the foreign royals bring in money with them and that this benefits local economies via the trickle-down effect; but not so, says the WWF and at least one local forestry officer. The airport constructed by Prince Fahd is used very little outside the hunting season and although food, money and Hajj tickets are distributed, they are little more than a drop in the ocean and certainly not enough to aggregate to a single percentage point of the provincial economy. There may be hope for the bustard in the recently-enacted Balochistan Wildlife Protection, Preservation, Conservation and Management Act of 2014; which has provision for a substantial fine or the imprisonment of those who violate it, but our craven government is unlikely to bite the hands that feed it.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 6^th, 2015.

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