Drought-ridden Indian bird park loses its birds

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Drought-ridden Indian bird park loses its birds

Tuesday, 27 February 2007

 

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