Makkah newspaper

I DO not know exactly what is the role of the Saudi Wildlife Authority. Is the protection of wildlife a part of their task? It does not seem. Maybe they are protecting wildlife or maybe they are doing their best to carry out this task, but we believe what we see with our eyes and hear with our ears.

What we can see with our eyes is that there are vicious enemies of nature and wildlife. These vicious enemies cannot be stopped. They cut down an aging tree just like that and without any remorse. They are like locusts that swarm a green landscape and destroy it.

Some Saudis are strange and contradict themselves. When they travel abroad, the first thing they notice is the green landscape and trees. They take photographs from every angles of these trees. One would think that these Saudis worship nature and treat it with the upmost respect. That doe snot happen inside our borders. Every tree, no matter how old and what kind of that tree, will end up cut down and using the wood for fire, whether the Saudi Wildlife Authority likes it or not.

Any animal that walks, crawl or fly is also a target of these vicious enemies of nature and wildlife and will always end up cooked and eaten. In these days when duststorms come from all over, and the dust in the air is more than oxygen, I am sure that the destruction of green space and trees is one of the main reasons why the Saudis breathe dirt at many times of the year.

The word disaster or catastrophe cannot describe the decades of killing vegetation and what the enemies of the environment are doing to our desert.

If we are going to wait to increase awareness about the importance of environment and wildlife, then we will be wasting time. It will not be safe and aging tree or a migrant bird who does not know the tragedy waiting for it if it flew in our skies. It is important to establish environment police. Until the time environment police is established, we need to explain to people that wildlife is a bigger concept and includes more than the protection of deers and Houbara. These two animals are the luckiest animals when it comes to the care of Saudi Wildlife Authority, but at the same time, it did not protect them from being hunted down.