- CJP orders cancellation of permits/licenses for hunting endangered species, bans further issuance
- Pak bound by international conventions as JUI-F senator explains monetary benefits of houbara killing
A three-member Supreme Court (SC) bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Jawwad S Khawaja and comprising Justice Dost Muhammad Khan and Justice Qazi Faez Isa, on Wednesday upheld a petition, filed by Advocate Raja Muhammad Farooq on behalf of Aamir Zahoorul Haq, seeking ban on all permits and licences for the hunting of endangered birds.
Dismissing the opposition’s petitions, including an application of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) provincial deputy chief Senator Attaur Rehman, the court, in its short order, ordered the cancellation of all such existing hunting permits in this regard.
Zahoorul Haq’s petition requested the court to restrain the Foreign Affairs Ministry and Wildlife Department from issuing permits and licences for hunting endangered birds. He had also asked the court to order the setting up of an independent commission to look into the alleged abrogation of their “statutory duty” by the respondents and violation of the provisions of permits and licences by the VIP hunters.
The petition recalled that Pakistan had imposed a permanent ban on the hunting of houbara bustards under the Third Schedule of the Pakistan Wildlife Ordinance 1971, after declaring the specie a protected bird. However, despite the ban, licences or permits were being issued to VIP dignitaries of the Gulf States for hunting the specie.
The petition cited media reports and said that as many as 33 special permits had been granted to the foreign dignitaries for hunting the specie during 2013-14, specifically allocating areas in the country’s four provinces for the purpose.
The permits allow hunting down of up to 100 birds but this limit is often crossed by the hunters, it said, requesting that the issuance of licences/permits for houbara hunting be declared illegal and unlawful without lawful authority and jurisdiction.
The petition said that special permits were being issued also in violation of laws like the Punjab Wildlife (Protection, Preservation, Conservation and Management) Act 1974.
According to the petition, a large number of houbara bustards are trapped, mainly in Pakistan and Iran, and shipped to Arab countries for use in training falcons to hunt.
The houbara bustard is listed in the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals, also known as the Bonn Convention, and its irrationally brutal hunting in its winter habitats is highly objectionable, especially because it is an endangered species.
It has also been declared as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of threatened species because it has undergone rapid population declines over three decades owing to unsustainable hunting as well as habitat degradation. Pakistan is signatory to the conventions.
However, on the other hand, Through Advocate Adnan Bhasharatullah, the JUI-F senator contended that the idea was to ensure the people’s welfare and the province’s prosperity by permitting foreign dignitaries to hunt the bird.
“The dignitaries who come to hunt the bird have not only established certain projects but are also paying Rs 10 million for hunting 50 birds a season,” Rehman had said, adding that the province earned approximately Rs 2 billion every hunting season.
