The debate over the future of Margalla Hills National Park has often centred on tourism, recreation and commercial activity. Yet the real question is not whether public should have access to the park, but how a small and ecologically significant protected area can be managed in a way that safeguards its long-term conservation values. Managed public access and conservation already coexist in the park. The damage to it has come from commercial structures that violated environmental law.

Margalla Hills National Park is far more than a scenic backdrop to Islamabad. Spanning 17,386 hectares, it supports more than 600 plant species, 38 species of mammals, including a breeding population of leopards, 266 species of birds, 13 species of reptiles and 147 species of butterflies. The common leopard, Indian pangolin, Tawny eagle, Steppe eagle and Alexandrine parakeets are some of the threatened species found in the national park. The biodiversity significance of the national park is immense, considering that nearly 40 percent of Pakistan's documented bird species inhabit its grounds. Its forests protect the catchment feeding Rawal Lake and provide clean air, water, carbon storage and recreational space for a rapidly growing capital region. As urban development continues to press against its boundaries, the Park remains one of Pakistan’s most valuable and vulnerable natural assets.

The scale and setting of Margalla Hills National Park shape the conservation choices available to its managers. Unlike vast protected areas that can accommodate visitor infrastructure while retaining extensive undisturbed cores, Margalla is a compact urban national park where every commercial structure occupies habitat, adds pressure on wildlife and reduces the ecological space the park was created to protect.

Experience from protected areas across Asia, such as Kinabulu and Wuyishan, highlights the importance of strict zoning, visitor limits, independent management authorities and strong oversight mechanisms. Access is rationed with strict waste rules in place. These parks can concentrate visitor facilities in limited areas while protecting large core habitats. Even then, conservationists continue to warn about the impacts of over-commercialisation and mass tourism. Margalla’s smaller size and urban setting leave far less room for such trade-offs.

The prominence of Margalla Hills National Park in public debate can sometimes create the impression that Pakistan’s other protected areas receive less attention. In reality, many of the country’s larger parks have benefited from decades of conservation and management interventions. Central Karakoram National Park, for example, has been subject to long-term management planning involving local communities, while conservation programmes in Deosai helped reverse the decline of the Himalayan brown bear. WWF-Pakistan has also supported snow leopard research and community-based conservation initiatives in Khunjerab, Deosai and Central Karakoram, and contributed to management planning for Hazarganji Chiltan National Park. These efforts reflect the sustained attention devoted to some of Pakistan’s most important protected landscapes.

Margalla, however, presents a different conservation challenge. While remote mountain parks often contend with threats such as poaching, overgrazing and human-wildlife conflict, Margalla faces continuous urban expansion at the edge of a growing capital city. The fact that its challenges are different does not make them any less significant. Rather, it underscores the need for management approaches tailored to the specific pressures facing each protected area.

Margalla’s own history offers important lessons for future management. Over the years, commercial developments within the park have highlighted the challenges of balancing economic interests with conservation objectives and enforcing environmental safeguards consistently.

Margalla Hills National Park is far more than a scenic backdrop to Islamabad. Spanning 17,386 hectares, it supports more than 600 plant species, 38 species of mammals, including a breeding population of leopards, 266 species of birds, 13 species of reptiles and 147 species of butterflies.

Any management approach must address a fundamental governance challenge. Margalla’s experiences has demonstrated that environmental safeguards on paper are not enough. Requirements for environmental assessment, waste management and control on development already existed, yet they were not consistently enforced. The issue was not simply a lack of rules, but the difficulty of enforcing them where regulatory and commercial interests became intertwined. Effective conservation depends not only on sound policies, but also on independent oversight, accountability and the political will to uphold them.

Commercial development within the park, including the long-running legal proceedings concerning the closure of Monal and La Montana restaurants, reflects a broad pattern of encroachment and competing land-use pressures. While the legal status of these restaurants is once again subject to judicial proceedings, over the years, portions of the Margallas have been diverted, occupied or developed through a series of decisions taken in isolation. Courts have repeatedly intervened to protect the park’s boundaries, yet pressure from infrastructure projects and urban expansion continues to grow. The principal threat to Margalla is not one restaurant or one building, but the cumulative effect of incremental losses that gradually erode the integrity of the protected area.

None of this means that people should be excluded from the park. Public access and conservation already coexist in the Margallas, which support a network of over 30 hiking trails, viewpoints, and recreational spaces enjoyed by thousands of visitors each year. The distinction is between access and commercialisation. Small-scale visitor facilities like kiosks for water and tea stalls that serve hikers and families may be accommodated where appropriate. Given that numerous hotels, restaurantsand other hospitality facilities already exist within a two-kilometre radius of the national park, there is no compelling justification for introducing large-scale commercial infrastructure within the park's core conservation zone. Large commercial development that requires permanent construction, increased traffic and intensive use of natural resources is a different matter. Conservation does not require closing the park to people; it requires ensuring that public enjoyment does not come at the expense of ecological values the park was created to protect.

The park’s original designation as a national park in 1980 must guide all decisions. That status takes legal and constitutional priority over later commercial leases or ownership claims - a position upheld by the Supreme Court, which ordered the closure of restaurants and commercial activity that violate the 1979 wildlife law. While the matter is under review after a challenge, the principle remains clear: protected land cannot be treated as a commercial asset.

Management of the Park should rest fully with the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board, operating as an independent conservation authority, properly funded and staffed with ecological and legal experts, and supported by the federal government, with conservation objectives guiding all management and financing decisions.

A small, fragile park like Margalla delivers far greater value in clean air, water, biodiversity and public recreation than commercial rent might generate. The vacated sites should be repurposed for education and nature learning, ensuring public access continues without repeating harms of commercialisation.

Margalla is not just land to be managed, but a public trust to be upheld for future generations. Its protection ultimately depends on consistent governance that resists short-term economic pressures and will reflect how seriously we take the idea of conservation in Pakistan’s capital city.

The writer is the director general of World Wide Fund for Nature-Pakistan.