LOST FORESTS
Above-average rainfall this spring has helped the prime minister’s “Plant for Pakistan” drive.
The Balloki Nature Reserve has started coming back to life, and the results will be seen in the next three to four years, Aslam said.
The aim is to apply the model to encroached areas of other river basins, including the Taunsa Barrage on the Indus and Sulemanki Headworks on the Sutlej.
“We want to get government-owned land back, and restore riverine forests and wetlands all over Punjab,” Aslam said, estimating that thousands of acres had been encroached upon in the last few decades.
Pakistan lost an average of 43,000 hectares of forests – equal to half the size of Islamabad - every year between 2000 and 2010, according to WWF-Pakistan.
With only 2 percent of its forest cover remaining, the country’s deforestation rate is the highest in Asia, the environmental group said.
The Sindh Forest Department and green groups have recently launched a scheme to plant about 2 billion trees across that province in the next five years, Pakistani media reported.
At the Balloki inauguration, the prime minister spoke about visiting as a child large forests in parts of Punjab, which have now all but disappeared.
WWF's Naqi Khan said pilferage had ruined the once-healthy plantations. “Government departments involved with local people and some outsiders cut the trees and sold them,” he said.
The prime minister told journalists 70 percent of Pakistan’s forests had been cut down in the past few years, creating "an imbalance in our environment”.
“We are now going to allow builders to build higher buildings, just so our cities stop expanding and encroaching on our forests,” he added.
