*(Footloose, NOS, The News International)
Mountain legacy
Sheikh Badin National Park in DIK is fast losing its natural heritage
By Mohammad Niaz
Those who have been to Table Mountain National Park, having a flat-mountain-top, in Cape Town, South Africa, may be surprised at its similarity with the paramount summit of the Sheikh Badin National Park in Dera Ismail Khan District in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
This sheer symbolic mountainous area having an inspirational, historical, and biological significance is fading from memories for want of appropriate planning and major developmental inputs since the British regime in 1860. The scenic splendour as a hill station and inspirational sanctuary for reclusion of sanctimonious and cloistered entities in the past have earned name for the area, which is generally pre-dominant with arid climatic and topographic features.
Back in the British era the English used it as a hill station for administration purpose ,depriving the indigenous people of the privilege to have an open access to the summit because of the warden off boundaries. By 1880s some improvisation of the site was undertaken by the British administration as a hill station which served as district headquarter where open kuchehry was held to settle issues.
Today, visitors here have nothing to avail in terms of recreation and outing as most of the buildings reminiscent of past have suffered an enormous loss over time owing to lack of development.
Access to the top of Sheikh Badin is a challenging endeavour both by road or by foot. To facilitate their carriages and goods supply through mules and donkeys, the British administration started construction of a single source of access in the form of a 10km-long road as a prime pursuit from Pezu, a small village at the base of the Sheikh Badin.
Visitors without 4x4 vehicles organise local transport for the incredible journey. From a distance the ascent does not seem so testing but getting onto the track casts a realisation of the arduous undertaking.
Given the worse condition of the track due to non-maintenance, the smooth drive is hampered especially due to slides and rains with inadequate repairs by the locals on self-help basis. With steep gradient and the bad track condition a vehicle takes about an hour to reach onto the top; however, four hour-adventurous walk of visitors with intermittent stopovers can be another option to cover the track. Local people for their ease use a couple of short-cut trails to shorten the distance.
It provides only an experiential sensation when just after about one hour ascendant drive from Pezu having about 1,300 feet elevation, the difference in temperature is obviously observed as in summer the lowland areas are steaming with heat having over 45°C.
The park offers a squash court constructed by the British officers. A four km circular kacha track built at that time around the Gonda facilitated jogging and walking. A bit further from the residential ruins, a British cemetery over an area of about four canals, used for ceremonies of burial and offering homage to the dear ones, still exists with vanishing grace and traces.
For meeting purposes all visitors still commonly use a wide lawn as a picnic spot. Now silted, the water tanks were established to ensure rainwater storage. In fact, scarcity of potable water is one of the leading problems for the local residents.
Biological significance and importance of the area can be gauged from the fact that it has been managed as a reserved forest since 1952, which was also declared latter as a game sanctuary in 1972 by the government to safeguard the indigenous biological treasure of the area. The Sheikh Badin was subsequently notified as a national park by the provincial wildlife department in 1993 over an area of 15540 hectares, which is one of the pioneering national parks in the province.
Sheikh Badin mountain range serves as a ‘biological island’ because of the fact that its corridor connectivity got lost with the Suleiman mountain range owing to the sprawling human habitations in the vicinity of its corridor which led to extinction of Suleiman markhor from the Sheikh Badin. “It serves as a mountain oasis in the desert type habitat of the surroundings, because there is no scrub vegetation in the vicinity and this uniqueness distinguishes this chunk of mountain range as a biological island. Efforts are being made to manage the park on scientific basis with involvement of local communities to safeguard biological treasure and legacy of this unprecedented mountain through appropriate management planning,” says Dr Muhammad Mumtaz Malik, a wildlife conservationist of KP.
The outskirts and heights of Sheikh Badin are studded with abundant growth of dense scrub forest vegetation including olive, phulai, kikar, and sanatha to enhance the eye-soothing effect and to keep the microclimate moderate. The park is being managed by the provincial wildlife department to preserve wilderness of the Sheikh Badin forests through participation of the local communities around.
As the “beauty and the beast” phrase is known to many, same goes for Sheikh Badin as well where right in the foothill a cement factory is exuding its constant dust and smoke out of its towering chimneys that serve as a blemish against the backdrop of this beautiful natural setting. Moreover, like termites eat up wood, mineral extraction and quarrying in the vicinity of Sheikh Badin is inflicting irreparable loss that actively contributes to gradual spoiling of this natural heritage.*