Chopping trees damaging Balochistans environment.

QUETTA, September 07, 2009 (Balochistan Times): Influential persons have been continuing chopping down trees along roads and from official forests without any permission by the government while such activity is badly damaging environment of Balochistan. The highways and roads running throughout Balochistan and official forests have deprived of most of their trees which had been existing for last 40 to 60 years as influential persons have chopped thousands of such trees and minted huge money by selling them. In past, there was a line of Joneepar forests from Ziarat to Kalat through Quetta but now Quetta has deprived of kind of these forests. In Quetta city hundreds of old trees were chopped down on the pretext of widening roads or constructing commercial plazas but no new ones were planted, causing a dearth of trees in the provincial capital. Chalghoza forests are found in districts Zhob and Shirani abundantly and owners of Chalghoza forests earn millions of rupees every year by selling this dry fruit. For last few years, cutting Chalghoza trees for fuel or construction purpose and a virus disease to these forests have badly damaged them. Whole of the year, whether remains dry in Quetta and adjoining cities as rare, they receive showers but Zhob and Shirani districts receive rains frequently which have been resulted in growth of forests of Chalghoza, pomegranate, grapes, apricot, parpok and joneepar at a large scale. Although some NGOs have convinced local people that they should avoid cutting Chalghoza trees but no desirable results could be achieved in this regard so far. Forests of Ash, Chambli, Pine, Shehtoot and Channar which were found in very cool areas of Balochistan like that of Ziarat, Kalat, Khanewal and Kolpur in abundance in past, now their strength have decreased. When this scribe discussed the issue with internationally known scientist and environment expert Dr. Tahir Qureshi about presence of mangroves forests in Balochistan, he contended that Balochistan had 777 kilometre long coast but it had been deprived of its mangroves forests due to grazing cattle in these forests, cutting of mangroves trees for fuel purposes and other causes. He was of the view that Arabian sea has mud volcanoes which cause a cyclone in a century. He noted that if seven line plantation of mangroves trees was carried out along coast of Sindh and Balochistan, then coastal areas including Thatta, Karachi, Hub, Gwadar, Pasni and others easily become safe from damages of cyclone as mangroves forests break power of strong sea winds and cyclone. Some kinds of trees including peepal, neem, barh, babool, keekar and beri were also found in the province but now their strength have slashed. The old men tell that in past, about 30 to 40 years old, there was no trend of using electric fans in Quetta city but now air-conditions could be seen. They maintained that during this period, temperature of cool areas of Balochistan had surged. Some experts are of opinion that chopping trees at a large scale have also caused increasing temperature in cool areas. Some officials of Forest Department told this scribe that Government of Balochistan had planned to plant 0.5 million plants in the province in this spring season. This would be a great step to making the province green if carried out in letter and spirit.

(THROUGH ASIA PULSE)