By Abdul Ghani

As many as 165 village conservation committees (VCCs) have been established across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) under the wildlife component of the Upscaling Green Pakistan Programme (UGPP).

According to official data, a copy of which is available with Wealth Pakistan, detailing the progress of major wildlife activities under the UGPP from FY2019 to the third quarter of FY2025-26, a total of 165 village conservation committees have been established under the program.

In AJK, 115 village conservation committees have been established, while 50 have been set up in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

No village conservation committees have been reported under this activity in Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, or Gilgit-Baltistan during the period covered by the progress report.

The establishment of village conservation committees constitutes one of the specifically reported wildlife activities under the Upscaling Green Pakistan Programme. The initiative places community-level conservation structures among the activities being implemented as part of the programme’s wildlife component.

The figures also highlight a significant regional concentration of this activity, with AJK accounting for nearly 70 percent of the total committees established while KP accounts for the remaining 30 percent.

The establishment of these committees is among the quantified achievements reported under the programme’s wildlife activities, with AJK and KP emerging as the only regions where progress has been recorded for this specific intervention during the period under review.

Credit: INP-WealthPk