For 20 years, Khunjerab National Park was of significance to both Pakistan's government, which established the park in 1975 as a sanctuary for rare species, and residents who had grazed their livestock on the land for generations.

General views of eco-tourism in Pakistan Photos: VCG

As disputes over the land occurred, poachers decimated Khunjerab's wildlife, villagers say - until 1995, when residents and the authorities decided to work together to better protect the park.

"Our communities knew about natural resource management [and] we were well organized," said Muzaffar ud Din, a founding member of the Shimshal Nature Trust, which contributed members to a community-led management group set up to run the park.

"Now I would say Khunjerab is better managed than many other parks in the country. The local people look after it. The wildlife population has increased manifold," he said.

In its latest move to generate jobs amid the COVID-19 pandemic while boosting conservation and curbing the impacts of climate change, Pakistan has announced the creation of Pakistan's first National Parks Service, modeled on the US agency.

Under it, the country aims to get more local communities involved in running national parks and earning an income as they protect nearby conservation areas.

The first phase of the Protected Areas Initiative, launched on July 2, will focus on 15 national parks that make up a total of 7,300 square kilometers, spanning from Khunjerab in the north to the area around Astola Island in the south.

The project aims to create up to 5,000 new jobs, mainly for young people who will work as park guards and custodians, and boost eco-tourism in the country, authorities said when the initiative was announced.

Malik Amin Aslam, climate change advisor to Prime Minister Imran Khan, said the parks plan fits into Pakistan's post-coronavirus "green stimulus" vision, which also includes hiring thousands of unemployed day laborers to plant trees as part of the country's 10 Billion Tree Tsunami program. 

"The dual objective is to protect nature while also generating jobs for unemployed youth," he told Reuters.

"All this green activity will aid in addressing the unexpected spike in COVID-linked unemployment across the country."

'Paper parks'

Pakistan has about 30 national parks that are supposed to be protected and preserved by law.

But most are "paper parks" - areas classified as national parks but with little or no management, said Aslam, who helped design the new initiative.

Conservation expert Anis ur Rahman estimates only about 5 percent of the country's parks are properly managed.

The others suffer from clashing priorities and a lack of cooperation between the government and the communities that live around them and rely on them for grazing, hunting and firewood, he explained.

"In many cases, the government changed the status of these old community-managed forest areas or grazing areas into national parks where [suddenly] everything is prohibited by law," said Rahman, who heads the management board for Margalla Hills National Park, one of those included in the new project.

"But there is weak enforcement. The government does not have the resources to pay for adequate protection," he said.

Many of the country's environmental experts see Khunjerab, the country's oldest and largest national park, as a model of successful community-led management.

The park was established 45 years ago as a way to protect the area's glaciers, alpine pastures, streams and ravines.

Parts of it were closed off to create undisturbed habitat for animals from the rare Marco Polo sheep to snow leopards and Siberian ibex.

But the move was controversial with livestock farmers, who had long used the area.

Ashiq Ahmed Khan, a wildlife specialist working at the government's Pakistan Forest Institute in the 1990s, helped draft the first management plan for the park that brought together residents and the provincial wildlife department.

Under the plan, eight villages inside the park agreed not to graze livestock in its 12-square-kilometer core zone.

In exchange, other grazing areas were designated on a rotation that gave each time to recover after being used, noted Khan, who is now retired.

Community members were employed as guards and game inspectors, with 80 percent of employment opportunities in the park going to residents. It was also agreed that local communities would receive 75 percent of the revenue generated by visitor fees.

"It really was the first national park in the country whose management plan was actually implemented," Khan said.

"Today there are 100 Marco Polo sheep in the park, much more than the eight or nine I saw [in the 1990s] and there are more than 5,000 ibex."

General views of eco-tourism in Pakistan

Stronger laws?

So far, Pakistan's authorities have revealed few details about the new Protected Areas Initiative.

Aslam, the climate change advisor, told Reuters that the project will be overseen by Pakistan's new National Parks Service, due to launch in September.

He said the country had earmarked 4 billion rupees ($24 million) for the initiative's first phase over the next three years, of which at least 80 percent would be spent on creating green jobs and increasing community engagement.

Through the project, the amount of protected land in Pakistan will increase from 13 percent to 15 percent by 2023, Aslam added.

But environmental lawyer Rafay Ahmad Alam said that while the initiative is a positive step, it will do little to help preserve Pakistan's green spaces without legislation to back it up.

The initiative "won't make up for the fact that [most of] the provincial national park laws are weak and don't provide adequate specifics for conservation, protection or enforcement measures," he said.

Aslam agreed that proper provincial legislation is essential.
Newspaper headline: Green stimulus