Margalla trails: IWMB clarifies report on charging fee from hikers

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB) has said that it would not charge individual or group hikers on trails in the Margalla Hills, a national park near the capital.

“No one is charging individual or group hikers. It’s free to go up and down the trails. Please ignore the sensational headlines and misreporting and troublemakers,” IWMB chairperson Rina Saeed Khan posted on X, a social media platform.

She said IWMB was being misquoted by media and that it would only charge for guided tours where groups contact IWMB staff to guide them on various trails. It would also charge maintenance fees for events held at its visitor information centres on Trails 5 and 6 and in a leopard preserve, she said.

Khan said IWMB needed to generate funds to maintain the centres and trails and that the board would finalise its policy soon and share it with media.

Authorities demolish illegal settlements in Margalla Town

She said IWMB was also waiting for funding to initiate a comprehensive study of the leopard population in the Margalla Hills National Park, which covers 17,000 hectares.

A similar study conducted two years ago found eight leopards, including a mother and her two cubs, in the park. Khan said it was possible that the leopard population had increased or that some leopards had escaped the camera traps used in the study.

“Margalla Hills is a safe zone with plenty of game for the apex predator such as the barking deer, wild boars as well as monkeys,” Khan told Dawn.

IWMB also organised an event on Saturday to protect parakeets in the wild, in collaboration with the Psittacula Breeders Association of Pakistan.

The event involved the ringing of parakeets, a process that involves putting steel rings around their legs to identify them and prevent inbreeding.

The IWMB said the ringing of parakeets was necessary to protect wild populations and that it was illegal to keep parakeets without rings. It said 234 rings were issued at the event.