Islamabad celebrates Earth Day with clean-ups and awareness
STUDENTS FROM COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES PARTICIPATE IN A NATURE EXCURSION
Citizens of Islamabad city celebrated Earth Day yesterday with hiking, bird watching and clean-up activities at the scenic Trail 5 in Margalla Hills National Park.
Students from colleges and universities actively participated in a nature excursion organised by WWF-Pakistan and Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB) to mark Earth Day 2018.
The event kicked off with an informative session on the importance of keeping the environment clean.
“Margalla Hills National Park carries great significance for people of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. It holds our freshwater sources, forests, wildlife and above all it provides us the opportunity to refresh our bodies and souls through its scenic splendour” said Sakhawat Ali, assistant director of IWMB.
“The IWMB is keenly working on the protection of the park and raising awareness on the uniqueness of park’s ecosystem to the public through different activities” Sakhawat Ali told Gulf News.
The Earth Day activities included hiking, bird watching, wildlife identification, soil making and clean-up activities on the trail which offered the participants a chance to come closer to the nature. “We identified different type of birds, learnt about the local species through pug marks survey. I really enjoyed the activities with my friends and learnt a lot too” said Muqaddas Iman, a student. Local environmentalists, hikers, diplomats, journalists and WWF members also joined the excursion.
Plastic pollution
The theme for this year’s Earth Day focuses on ending plastic pollution. The use of plastic is ever increasing in Pakistan, posing a serious threat to ecosystems as plastic products take hundreds of years to decompose. The simplest plastic normally used as grocery bags take at least 100 years to break down while the complex ones take between 100 to 600 years or more to decompose.
“In Pakistan, plastic is seen everywhere and is becoming an environmental catastrophe. In our cities, plastic bags chock up our drains, which result in flooding. In our national parks, plastic bags are detrimental for wildlife and plants. More damaging is the plastic in oceans where marine animals eat plastic mistaking it for jellyfish hence dying a painful death” said Asma Ezdi, marketing and communications head at WWF-Pakistan.