I vividly remember that when I was a school going child at that time there were several honey bee friendly forests, meadows and pastures in Sindh but now all those appear to have vanished from the landscape once and for all. When I came to the Federal Capital Islamabad , some twenty years ago, and started going for hiking along with comrades and colleagues and also visiting various lush green natural and artificial sites on every weekend, whether one believes it or not, I used to see countless honeybees fanning here and there but focused to their beehives. But a nowadays honeybees have become rarely visible both in my home province Sindh and also in my man-made nature and environment –unfriendly mega projects, ruthless cutting of trees, herbs and shrubs.
Naturalists, environmentalists, climate experts, jurists, horticulturists, zoologists, botanists, media men, among others, who had assembled in the two-day consultative workshop to develop an action plan to combat illegal wildlife trade in Pakistan under the auspices of Worldwide Fund (WWF) and the USAID held in a local hotel last month, voiced their deep concern about a host of issues related to wild life species. One of the senior officers from the relevant federal ministry, with profound experience and innate love for nature and wildlife species informed that like other parts of the county, bee population in the federal capital Islamabad has massively declined but human population, house flies population, land grabbers’ population and that also of natural scenery and beauties destroyers has alarmingly increased in this city and also in this country.
According to a report from the UN, hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of crops are reliant on species of pollinators that are on the path to extinction.
HASHIM ABRO,
Islamabad, March 5.