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Birds of a feather ...

By Dr A.A. Quraishy

OF all our feathered friends pheasants offer the most gorgeous sight to behold, particularly the male ones. The peacock is only one such species. There are so many others.

Since pheasants are ground-dwelling birds they fall easy prey to trigger happy villains. In many countries of the world conservationists have set up pleasantries to save them from extinction, but there is one place in our own country where pheasantry itself has become endangered. A former NWFP governor, Lt-Gen I.H. Shah ordered a thriving pheasantry to be removed from Dhodial in District Manshera. His successor or the NWFP government is doing nothing to halt the move as yet.

The Dhodial Pheasantry, which houses as many as 34 out of the 52 species of pheasants in the world, was set-up way back in 1984 by the Wildlife Department of the government of the NWFP and has in all these 21 year turned into one of the largest of its kind in the world and the largest in Asia. Spread over 12 acres of lush green land and canopied by large trees, the pheasantry is a spot where birds feel very much at home. It’s heartening to note that their numbers have increased significantly to over 1,000.

When the new Hazara University was being set-up in 2001, the outgoing governor used his powers to relocate the Mental Hospital, the Agriculture Research Station and the Veterinary Laboratory.

The pheasantry is being removed to yield space for a girls’ hostel and opposition to its current spot does not mean one doesn’t realize the need for proper and exclusive residential quarters for girls, who are away from their families but sure enough, there is ample alternate space available for a girls’ hostel. The pheasantry occupies only 12 acres, while the university has as much as 204 acres, so why not build the hostel elsewhere without disturbing the birds which are well-settled there?

A point to ponder is that by shifting the pheasantry, the government would unnecessarily spend around Rs100 million besides wasting what has been spent so far. Also, one ought to remember that the pheasantry, if it remains at its present site, will serve as a place of educational value to zoology students and a recreational apace for all students and teachers who can enjoy the wide variety of colours and shapes which the different species of birds add to a drab existence. The construction work near the pheasantry combined with the noise and the dust have disturbed the birds no end who are so used to the quietude of nature. Fortunately, the chief secretary of the NWFP government has thwarted the move made by some ‘well-meaning’ people who suggested that the pheasantry be shifted to next door province of Punjab.

Once disturbed, the ex-situ gene-pool of the rare pheasant species painstakingly established at Dhodial would be denied to posterity and as such the whole effort of rehabilitating the threatened species which has brought the country to the world focus would be defeated — and it would become another ‘Bamian Buddhas’ in world press. Even a minor disturbance during the breeding seasons would easily scare the birds that are at different stages of frolicking, courtship, laying, hatching and raring the chicks and feeling quite at home in a setting identical to the original habitat of each species in each pen with great difficulty. It will take 20 years for such trees and setting to grow.

Located as it is on the Karakoram Highway, the main artery frequented by foreigners converging on to the scenic Northern Areas, the Dhodial Pheasantry has become a major tourists attraction as it projects the colourful fauna in a heavenly setting which can rarely be seen in nature. It would therefore be a pity if the visitors were denied the pleasure of seeing the beauty and carrying back home with them the nostalgic memories of tales from the Himalayas.