KARACHI: Water laps beneath a boardwalk winding through dense green mangroves in Karachi’s Qur’angi Creek, where Pakistan’s first dedicated mangrove biodiversity park is giving visitors controlled access to a coastal ecosystem increasingly under pressure from urban development.

Opened in September 2025 in collaboration with the Sindh Forest Department, the Mangrove Biodiversity Park aims to teach visitors about an ecosystem that plays an important environmental role along Pakistan’s coastline while limiting the human footprint on the habitat itself.

Mangroves grow in salty coastal waters and provide habitats for marine and bird life while helping protect shorelines from erosion, flooding and storm surges. They are found along the coastlines of Pakistan’s Sindh and Balochistan provinces, with the Sindh Forest Department saying the southern province has around 1.5 million acres of mangroves.

But those forests have increasingly come under pressure from development. A 2024 report by the World Wide Fund for Nature-Pakistan identified several locations along Karachi’s coastline where significant tracts of mangroves had been cleared over the years for housing, commercial and industrial projects.

At the new park, the challenge is different: how to bring people into the mangroves to understand their value without allowing their presence to damage the ecosystem.

“For one, it is a biodiversity park. It’s not like an Aladdin Park or anything similar,” Shah Murad Aliani, the park’s chairman, told Arab News, referring to a popular recreational park in Pakistan.

“The experience of this park is felt best when there is less noise, when there are fewer people and you can enjoy it.”

Visitors can walk along a 0.75-kilometer boardwalk extending into the mangroves, take guided tours and join creek excursions on boats powered by electric motors rather than conventional fuel engines. The park also offers sunset yoga sessions.

But access is deliberately restricted. Bookings are divided into time slots, with each closed once it reaches 30 visitors.

“Even when you go on to our website, you’ll find blocks where you can reserve your ticket,” Aliani said. “We have kept a capacity limit so that when a slot exceeds 30 people, [booking for] that time period closes.”

‘COEXISTENCE’ WITH NATURE

The park began not with plans for a visitor attraction but a proposed mangrove plantation.

Aliani said investment holding company TPL Corp. approached him about planting mangroves at the site. After visiting it, however, he recommended conserving the mature forest already growing there rather than establishing a new plantation.

“This is a mature forest and a very important one because it is right inside your urban area,” he recalled telling the company.

The park remains closed on Sundays, which Aliani said was intended to give the area respite from human activity.

Environmentalist Sundus Sohail said opening a natural habitat to people was neither inherently harmful nor automatically beneficial.

“I think the question is really about coexistence between people and the natural environment,” she told Arab News. “From an ecological perspective, human presence is not automatically a negative thing.”

Visitors could leave trash, disturb wildlife or damage vegetation, she said. But managed public access could also help people learn about ecosystems and understand the role mangrove habitats play in Karachi.

“So the question isn’t simply are we bringing people into the mangroves,” Sohail said. “It’s what kind of relationship are we creating between people and the natural ecosystem.”

Syed Zohaib Zaidi, a bird photography enthusiast, said visitors also had a responsibility to minimize their impact.

“Take care on your own part, do not litter here, do not make too much noise and simply enjoy this place,” he said.

For Ayesha Masroor, another visitor, the controlled access offered an unusual opportunity to experience a natural landscape within Pakistan’s largest city.

“My experience taking a boat ride and moving across these mangroves was very serene, was very peaceful,” she said. “I felt that I am somewhere far from the hustle bustle of the city.”