A prince of Saudi Arabia's royal family has arrived in Pakistan's Balochistan province for hunting the Houbara bustard, days after the country's Supreme Court lifted a ban on hunting of the endangered bird.
Prince Fahad bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, who is also the governor of Tabuk province in Saudi arrived in his special flight at the Dalbandin airport, the Express Tribune reported today.
The prince visits Dalbandin and other areas of the Chaghi district every year for hunting of the endangered species in the months of December and January, the daily reported.
The visit by the prince is apparently the first after the Supreme Court recently lifted the ban on hunting of Houbara bustard on January 22.
Houbara bustard is an endangered migratory bird, whose meat is prized by elite Arab sheikhs for its aphrodisiac value. The ban on the Houbara bustard, about the size of a chicken, was imposed by former chief justice Jawwad S Khawaja on August 20 last year, who also ordered the cancellation of all existing permits issued by government to Arab rulers.
The federal and provincial governments in October had challenged the ban, pleading that sustainable hunting should be allowed. A five-member larger bench headed by Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali lifted the ban in a verdict on the review petitions.
Houbara bustard is listed in the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals, also known as the Bonn Convention, and is declared as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The IUCN estimates the global population of Houbara bustards at between 50,000 and 100,000 and includes it on its red list of threatened species.
Each year, several thousand Houbara bustards traverse a 2,000 km migratory route from Central Asia to the southern deserts of Pakistan and Iran, and return with the onset of summer.
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Meanwhile, wildlife authorities briefly detained six Arab hunters for not carrying permits for hunting endangered houbara bustard in the Thatta district in the southern Sindh province.
The six Arab hunters who had come with 11 falcons for hunting the endangered bird were held by wildlife staffers as they did not have hunting permits but were released later and sent back to Karachi, officials said.
"They are from Qatar and have not yet returned for hunting," an official said today.
The official said the Arab hunters were camped near the famous Keenjhar Lake and were guests of a local politician and could not produce hunting permits when approached by wildlife staffers.
Hyderabad deputy wildlife conservator Ghulam Mohammad Gadani alleged that instead of protecting the wildlife staffers the local host had called police to scare the wildlife staffers who were doing their duty.
"The staffers contacted me and I informed the Thatta police chief, who ordered the police to assist them," Gadani said.
The Supreme Court recently revised an earlier decision of banning the hunting of houbara bustard but on condition that the government will issue special permits only out of utter necessity.
