Some get cameras. Some get files. Others barely register
Urban Bystander
Mirza had been reviewing Islamabad’s wildlife policy beside a torn plastic bag at the foot of Trail 5. He was pleased with the results. His tribe, he informed Nosy Mynah, was expanding. As evidence, he indicated three cousins on a railing, two uncles inside the bin and a nephew departing with half a samosa.
Mynah asked whether this constituted a census. Mirza said it constituted breakfast.
Whether Islamabad actually has more crows than before is difficult to establish. A study of Margalla birdlife recorded 304 house crows. Of these, 275 appeared at urban sampling sites, 25 along hiking trails and four in undisturbed forest. They show an urban preference, not population growth.
The crow had not abandoned nature. It had merely discovered where the catering was better.
Nosy Mynah found a federally funded study of Islamabad’s house crows, conducted from 2004 to 2007. The project remains easier to find online than its findings.
Nosy Mynah asked what it had discovered. Mirza said no species should be held hostage to its baseline. Nosy Mynah had an old-fashioned attachment to figures. She believed information, once obtained, should be permitted to inconvenience somebody.
Elsewhere in the E-7 forest, the census had acquired a harder unit. Earlier this year, a wildlife guard found a barking deer dead in a wire snare. A complaint followed, then an FIR and an investigation. The deer ceased to be wildlife and became a file.
The public record becomes quieter after that.
This might have been understandable if the Margallas were scientifically unknowable. They are not. Nature here has been counted, photographed, trapped by cameras, catalogued and classified with patience. Published descriptions of the park speak of roughly 600 plant species, 38 mammals, 250 birds, 32 reptiles and nine amphibians. Nature, on paper, appears reassuringly enumerated.
A 2026 study used four years of camera traps at 20 sites to examine leopard occupancy. In winter, distance from human settlement was its strongest predictor.
The leopard had acquired a season, a location and a probability.
A photographic inventory documented 146 butterfly species. A larger species count does not necessarily mean more butterflies. Sometimes it means somebody finally looked properly. The butterfly had acquired a book.
The firefly had acquired no comparable entry. Islamabad remembers it from older evenings and ministerial speeches, but no useful local trend line surfaced in the public record to show whether its light is diminishing. Mirza considered this a serious administrative disadvantage. The firefly works after office hours, carries no CNIC and leaves very little paperwork when it disappears.
Citizens, meanwhile, are counted more efficiently. On busy weekends, Trails 3 and 5 reportedly receive up to 4,000 visitors. They are not trespassers. They come for air, exercise, photographs and escape, all reasonable demands of a national park beside a capital. But four thousand reasonable demands make their own kind of weather. A former IWMB chair has said excessive human presence reduced bird visits to Trail 5. A proposal to rest the trail for a year was raised and rejected.
Nature and citizen are not neighbours here. They share an address.
Islamabad goes into the hills to observe wildlife. Wildlife may have been observing the advance party.
As the snack packets appeared, Mirza’s family moved twenty feet closer. Unlike the leopard, distance from human settlement did not appear to improve his prospects.
This is not a story about a Wildlife Board that knows nothing. It has enforced the law, restricted activity after dark, supported research and acted against poaching. The harder question begins after attention has been paid. The deer was found, the case was opened, the law was invoked. What changed on the ground afterwards? Knowledge exists. The question is what it changes.
What became of the FIR? How many snares were found afterwards, and did patrols change? What current bird and small fauna monitoring can the public actually see?
These are boring questions, which is often another way of saying they are difficult to answer ceremonially.
Nosy Mynah asked Mirza what had changed after the deer entered the file.
Mirza watched another wrapper miss the bin.
The deer had acquired a case.
Mirza’s family, meanwhile, had acquired Islamabad.
The writer can be reached at [email protected]
