LALAZAR Safari Park in Nathiagali is located on the Lalazar mountaintop at a height of 9,000 feet. After parking the car, you climb the winding track, which passes through pine, fir and deodar forest, on foot or on a horse. It takes about 25 minutes to reach the Safari Park.

Benches are suitably located for short rests on the way. A board near the entry gate tells you that the Park is administered by the Pakhtunkhwa Wild Life Department, and warns the visitor not to feed animals and birds, and not to trash the place.

During my visit on July 27 the zookeepers were absent. An eight-year-old child at the gate had the entry tickets, but visitors were entering without paying for the Rs15 ticket.

The child said his father, the only chowkidar, had gone for Friday prayers. The man did not turn up during the three hours of my visit.

The Lalazar Safari Park/Zoo is well designed, but is in a state of neglect. It has two common (Galliat) leopards kept inside a large compound with high barbed wire. This pair is healthy and playful. The height, the environment and the cool weather is ideal for Galliat leopards, Some more could be added.

Man has invaded their habitat and only 50 are left. The leopard feeds on monkeys, dogs, goats and poultry.

A number of leopards are killed every year when they enter villages in search of food. In 2007, two leopards in Galliat forests attacked 12 persons, and killed seven women and girls.

The provincial forest minister and the NWFP Wild Life Department urged the people to kill leopards at sight, and invited sharpshooters from Lahore to decimate them. In the killing spree that followed about 15 leopards were killed and five trapped, caged and sent to Karachi, Lahore and Margazar Zoo in Islamabad.

In these Zoos the leopards confined in small cages routinely die from heat during summer. For the survival of the zoo-confined leopards, it is requested that they be shifted to the Lalazar Safari Park in Nathiagali from March 15 to Nov 15.

There was a snow leopard in a cage. It was presented by a VIP who keeps big cats as pets. Snow leopards live at heights of around 15,000 feet. This lone animal should be released to enable it to survive in one of the National Parks in the Korakorum mountains.

The six monkeys, and the five pheasants in the Lalazar Safari Park are famished and starving. There is no arrangement to feed them. These pheasants should be regularly fed or shifted to the ‘dudial’ pheasantry near Mansera on the KKH Highway.

Lalazar Safari Park is the only zoo in the Pakhtunkhwa province. It could be turned into the most beautiful safari park in the country. But it needs to be properly funded, staffed by trained zookeepers and properly administered.

AYAZ AHMED KHAN Nathiagali