Drought-ridden Indian bird park loses its birds
India: For years, tourists have come to India's Keoladeo Ghana
National Park to gaze at shimmering, bird-flocked wetlands stretching to
the horizon.
But where there were once vast lakes, visitors now find puddles
nursed by a network of stuttering diesel-fuelled pumps, which suck up
groundwater from deep beneath the parched earth.
Years of poor monsoon rains have left most of this World Heritage
site near Bharatpur in the desert state of Rajasthan dry and cracked,
while local farmers insist on getting most of what little rain water is
dammed to irrigate their fields. This has forced most of the thousands
of migratory birds that would once spectacularly descend on Keoladeo
every year for the winter to make alternative arrangements elsewhere.
"Before, the skies were so full of birds it was a wonder they didn't
collide into each other," recalled Mahendra Vyas, a lawyer who advises
India's Supreme Court on conservation issues.
"Now there is nothing there," he added.
Although the park has not yet been added to the United Nation's
danger list, the World Heritage committee warned in 2005 that if the
park continues to dry up then it risks losing its status as a World
Heritage site. "The situation is not good and the prognosis for the
future also doesn't appear to be very encouraging," Kishore Rao, the
deputy director of the United Nation's World Heritage Centre, told
Reuters by telephone from his Paris office.
"Delisting has not happened before but that doesn't mean it won't
happen in the future," said Rao.
"No water, no birds, no tourists"
When India succeeded in getting Keoladeo listed as a World Heritage
site in 1985, it promised to look after the unique wetlands for the
benefit of humanity. But word is spreading, especially on travel
websites, that India is failing in that undertaking. As a result,
visitors are showing up in ever smaller numbers, locals say.
February should be a busy month at the height of the tourist season;
but most of the men dozing on their cycle-rickshaws at the park gates
are lucky these days to get hired.
"No water, no birds, no tourists," complained Rampal Singh, who says
he and his fellow rickshaw drivers are struggling on their reduced
earnings. Hoteliers also say bookings are down.
Inside the park, a handful of foreign tourists cluster around the
edge of the largest stretch of pumped water, binoculars trained on
kingfishers and other resident birds. Their disappointment at the mostly
empty skies increased in proportion to the size and cost of their
bird-spotting gear.
German tourist Franziska Freitag, who had stopped off at the park
between visits to the nearby Taj Mahal and the famous pink city of
Jaipur, said she was happy to have seen a python and some "very
beautiful" owls. But Leif Jonasson, who had lugged several thousand
euros' worth of camera equipment from Sweden, said he was saddened to
find that bleak reports of the park's deterioration were true.
"It's a pity to see these small puddles. They're like peas in an
ocean," he said. Pipeline pipedream? Rajasthan's forestry department
thinks the best solution is to top up the park with water piped in from
the Chambal river, about 80 km (50 miles) away, or from the Goverdhan
floodwater drain, about 20 km (12 miles) away.
But that might not help much as an entire wetland ecosystem would
have to be created with fish, turtles and other aquatic life vital to
wetland ecology - to establish a habitat for wintering cranes, storks
and ibises who migrate to the region from as far as China and Siberia.
Reuters |
