slamabadWildlife Management Board, meant to protect the environment of the federal capital and conserve the Margalla Hills National Park, is being accused of protecting the interests of a few powerful people in vaioltion of its mandate.

In February, the Capital Development Authority dissolved the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board with a stroke of the pen. No reasonswere provided.

The CDA then reconstituted the IWMB, announcing new members, most of them civilservants. The move was criticised bysome of the previous board members, who claimed that it was against the law.

The Ministry of Climate Change and Environmental Coordination announced the formation of the new board consisting of senior civil servants. Before this, the IWMB members were instructed to halt the plantation campaign at Monal, where an eatery was demolished on the orders of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

The new members of the IWMB include the ministry’s secretary, the joint secretary for administration and development, the environment protection member of the CDA, a high-ranking officer nominated by Islamabad’s mayor and the deputy commissioner of the Islamabad Capital Territory.

Some civil society groups have filed a petition in Islamabad High Court following the dissolution of the previous board. The petition, citing the Ministry of Climate Change and the CDA as respondents, seeks the revival of the old board until a new and independent board is constituted.

“The government’s advertisement for independent board members is defective. Rules need to be made under the new Islamabad Nature Conservation and Wildlife Management Act before an advertisement for new members is placed,” the petition argues.

The petition contends that the new board does not meet the requirements of Section 3(1) of the new Act which stipulates that the Board must contain 9 members, out of whom four must have “expertise and experience in the sphere of biodiversity and wildlife management.”

“An advertisement put out for the non-ex-officio members suffers from a fatal defect: it does not mention the terms and conditions for the appointment. The said terms and conditions have yet to be stipulated through rules.The haste with which the board has been dissolved and defective advertisement put out suggests malafide intentions.”

In a recent presser, the previous board alleged that theCDA staff was interfering in restoration work at the site of the demolished restaurants in MHNP. The CDA has denied these allegations.

In February, the Capital Development Authority dissolved the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board.No reasonswere provided. The CDA then reconstituted the IWMB, announcing new members, mostly civil servants. The move was criticised by previous board members, who claimed that this violated the law.

The former board memberssaid that, on December 31, last year, CDA staff visited the site and ordered the IWMB staff to stop restoration work at Monal.

Following the orders of the Supreme Court, the Monal, La Montana and Gloria Jeans were asked to leave the national park area.

Monal was set up by the CDAwhich in 2006 leased out the eatery for 15 years. The lease agreement expired in 2021. This was followed by a dispute with regard to the ownership of the land. Subsequently, Monal started depositing partial payments to both the army and the CDA.

After the demolition of Monal in September 2024, the turf war between the IWMB and the CDA gained momentum. Eventually, the IWMB was dissolved and the Ministry of Climate Change put in the interim board with officials from the ministry and the CDA as members. The Ministry has since advertised for interested individuals to apply for the board membership.

Irfan Niazi, the CDA’s environment protection deputy director general,says that the board was stopped only from the construction of walls and not plantation.

“Such moves to restart the restaurants and eateries in the MHNP will affect the city.A permanent haze can already been seen in the capital city,” says Muhammad Habib, a civil society member. “Besides, Monal has been relocated to another site.”

The IWMB was established in 2015. It was constituted under Section 4 of the Islamabad Wildlife (Protection, Preservation, Conservation, and Management) Ordinance 1979, empowering it to enforce and regulate wildlife conservation efforts within the MHNP.

The World Wide Fund for Nature, an international non-governmental organisation dedicated to wilderness preservation and reducing human impact on the environment,has condemned the recent shake-up of the IWMB, calling it a “potential threat” to the preservation of the MHNP.

The restructuring of the board, the WWF-Pakistan says, contradicts the Supreme Court’s directive for the IWMB to function as an independent and autonomous body.

The Fund has warned that the move could undermine essential conservation efforts, including re-wilding and rehabilitation programmes at the MHNP, a key ecological asset for the region. It has urged the government to include independent experts and representatives from civil society organisations in the board, as mandated by the law, to ensure balanced and effective decision-making.

The writer is a staff member. He can be reached at vaqargillani@gmail.com