Daily Times

Noted environment activist and President Sustainable Tourism Foundation, Pakistan Rana Aftab called for awareness about animals’ rights, and persuade people to extend kindness and respect to all sentient creatures.

“We need to sensitize our youth and create awareness through digital and traditional media about the importance of animals’ rights and protection of their natural habitat for safeguarding this planet and environment,”he added.

Aftab termed lack of awareness about the animals’ rights as one of the big reasons for the inhuman treatment meted out to animals across the globe. “These animals are part of our web of life and we need to protect them for the healthy environment and survival of human life.”

He urged the need of proper implementation mechanism of the rules and regulation and pointed out the need to disseminate the information about the animal rights in national language. “Unawareness make people kill many animals which are important to maintain the natural cycle of the ecosystem.” He said that the departments working on wild life conservation, national parks and wilderness areas have very limited staff and cannot manage the proper preservations of wild life. “Due to this, illegal hunting of animals is carried out by influential while the situation is better in those areas where community is being involved for the protection of animals.”

The northern areas where local community provides protection to wild life has sufficient number of animals with their natural habitat, he said while urging to engage local communities along with the departments to protect the animal’s life.

He said that incentive-based programs like trophy hunting should be launched across the country which not only help generate revenue and discourage illegal hunting but also increase the interest of the local community through increasing their involvement.

He told that the 70 percent of revenue of trophy hunting is shared with the local community while 30 percent share goes to government.

Talking about the rights of the animals, Rana Aftab was of the view that both domestic and wild animals have rights and “we need to educate our masses about these rights. Provision of proper medical facilities, natural habitat, safety and food to the domestic animal including pet and those involved in labour are the basic rights, he added.

He also highlighted the role of wild animals in maintaining the natural living environment, saying that there is need to protect their natural habitat and stop their illegal hunting for the safeguard of our planet. “Human being, birds, animals and insects all are the parts of web of life and if an one is disturbed, everyone in the web will suffer drastic impacts, including human beings.

“Animals are friends of human beings and we need to create a healthy atmosphere for them to protect the web of life. Stop thinking of animals as human property and think of them as companion animals instead of pets” he added.