Housing plan threatens Sandspit backwater ecology

Faiza Ilyas in DAWN:

“The government has been urged several times to declare the entire Sandspit/Hawkesbay area (including the turtle nesting grounds) a nature reserve where the state needs to regulate human interference. It’s painful that now another plan is in the offing and that, too, not by any private organisation but a public sector department to destroy what little biodiversity is left in the backwater,” said deputy director general WWF-P Dr Ejaz Ahmad.

Once domestic sewage would start flowing from coastal housing projects into the backwater, small in-house factories would also appear and it would be difficult to stop the ecosystem from complete collapse, he pointed out.

More here.

Life cut short in the mangroves

Irfan Husain in DAWN:

IT would seem that all of Pakistan is in the grip of one frenzied land grab. From Khyber to Karachi, the rich, the powerful and the well-connected are squeezing out the vulnerable and the marginalised from their traditional lands to further enrich themselves.

More here.