The honking of wild geese and the cackle of mallards have returned to Kashmir, with migratory birds back in the Himalayan region as situation improves in the Valley.
Wildlife officials say over a million migratory birds, and at least 19 different species, flew down to Kashmir’s renewed wetlands and swamps this winter from Siberia, Central Asia and northern Europe.
“More migrating birds are expected, this year could set the record. Kashmir may have many times higher than the number of visitors at the peak of violence in the 1990s, when the first survey was conducted,” a wildlife official said.
For years lakes gathered silt and weeds, with officials either too scared to venture out to maintain them or simply not interested.
But as the violence declines government has started cleaning the lakes and wetlands and people kept away.
“Things have changed now completely. With security situation improving, we are paying lot of attention to regain the lost glory of these wetlands,” the official
added.
Flocks of greylag geese, coots and pintails have been seen in the Kashmir valley this autumn.
At the height of winter, wildlife workers break thick ice and throw paddy for hungry birds.
But environmentalists said not enough was being done to repair the damage done to the wetlands in the past.“In the past twenty years, every water body has shrunk by 50 percent and all wastes, even toxic wastes from adjacent localities, flows into these wetlands,” Imtiyaz Bhat an environmentalist.
“It is not visible that authorities are taking any concrete steps,” he said, referring to the waste issue.
Bhat said Hygam lake, north of Srinagar, which was once the region’s main bird habitat, was completely ruined.
Conservationists say past visitors like whooper swans, sandhill cranes, bar headed geese and purple-headed coots, still bypass Kashmir and fly instead to the remote Ladakh plateau.
(Free Press Kashmir)
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