Opinion | The Perilous State of Hokersar and Wular Wetlands

Every winter, from October to April, almost half a million migrating birds arrive in Kashmir from as far away as Siberia and Central Asia, making Hokersar one of the most spectacular sites in the Himalayas. In Kashmiri, the wetlands are also known as the Queen of Wetlands. However, in the recent 2023-24 audit report issued by the Comptroller and Auditor General, this queen has been described more plainly as a drying wetland that is losing its birds and biodiversity.

The extent of this shrinkage, which spans across decades and not years, is quite alarming. The area of Hokersar has decreased from 1,875 hectares in 1969 to approximately 1,300 hectares by 2008, reflecting a reduction of almost 30% within a span of four decades. The CAG audit reveals that 2,528 kanals, which is almost 316 acres of area, of the lake have been encroached upon through constructions, plantation and agricultural activities, even when the authorities could not reclaim such land even after serving notices. There has been a 7% decrease in the area of open water bodies at Hokersar from 2014 to 2020, along with a whopping increase of 1,157% in scrub areas, 102% increase in built-up areas, and a 42% increase in aquatic vegetation, due to human intervention and not ecological succession. Approximately 10 hectares of the area has been reclaimed as built-up colonies.

The story is replicated in Wular Lake, which is not only the largest fresh water lake in Asia but also an important ecological resource of Kashmir region. What was once a huge natural basin of the Jhelum River has been progressively shrinking because of encroachment and expansion of willows around the edges, silt accumulation, and uncontrolled land use conversion. It has been stated by the Wular Conservation and Management Authority that this lake has shrunk and lost nearly one-fifth of its water holding capacity in three decades. The NASA study, as reported in regional environmental studies, has revealed that this lake has experienced a drastic loss in area because of land use changes and deforestation in its catchment area. As per the latest report of the CAG regarding water bodies’ changes in Jammu and Kashmir from 1967 to 2020, more than 315 lakes in this region have disappeared and Wular, in particular, has been losing its water spread due to large scale encroachment at its edges and continued silt accumulation.

The human cost of such degradation is counted not only in ecology but in livelihoods as well. Wular alone accounts for almost 54 percent of the total fish production in Kashmir according to recent studies. In other words, the condition of the lake is vital for the financial status of thousands of families whose livelihoods depend on it. In one recent report, Abdul Subhan Dar, an elderly villager living near Wular, said that his memory of the lake as a child was one of a sea. Nowadays, however, many parts of the lake are so shallow that they can be used by children as playfields and by cattle as pastures; as a result, the amount of fish and food which the lake once provided has decreased significantly. It should also be mentioned that more than 7,000 households are reliant on Hokersar for grass and other materials which can be taken from the wetland.

In a larger scientific study of the ecological vulnerability of wetlands of Kashmir, it was discovered that almost 42 percent of the catchment of Wular Lake is highly vulnerable to ecological risks due to human activities, whereas Hokersar and Anchar wetland face severe ecological threats. Dal Lake is no exception to this problem. As per a separate report published by CAG, the open water coverage of Dal Lake has reduced by over 10 percent since 2007 due to reasons like encroachments, ineffective sewage plants, and lack of monitoring facilities; particularly at Mir Behri, Lati Mohalla, and Nandapora, where the expansion of gardens and habitation has directly resulted in loss of open water coverage.

Efforts by the government have been made in equal measure by sincere attempts and continued institutional weaknesses. The Department of Wildlife Protection claims that it has reclaimed over 2,000 kanals of encroached lands in Hokersar, while boundary demarcation drives and solid waste management campaigns have been offered as proof of efforts on the ground. A more recent government plan has come up with 1,810 water bodies in Jammu and Kashmir that need to be restored and protected in an integrated manner, which would include Dal Lake, Wular Lake, Anchar Lake, Khushal Sar and Hokersar through restoration and policies to prevent further encroachment and pollution. The audit of CAG, however, was highly critical of the Wildlife Protection Department that had been making efforts on an annual basis without any integrated conservation plan and had recommended scientific dredging, proper demarcation of encroached land and an integrated approach to hydrology, biodiversity and pollution.

Out of 697 water bodies examined in one recent audit, officials noted that only a handful, including Wular, Dal, Hokersar, Manasbal, Surinsar and Mansar, have received any focused conservation attention at all, leaving the vast majority of Kashmir’s smaller lakes and wetlands without restoration plans of any kind. This points to a resource allocation problem as much as a technical one: conservation efforts have concentrated on the most visible and politically significant water bodies, while less prominent wetlands, individually smaller but collectively significant for the region’s overall hydrology, continue to disappear largely unnoticed.

The implications of the issue go far beyond bird tourism and fish stocks, which are critical to the people in the area. The wetlands are natural buffers of floods from a river system known for its potential for catastrophic flooding, particularly during the month of September in 2014. The loss of every hectare of Hokersar and Wular in terms of encroachment translates into a lost flood management facility, one that Srinagar and its neighboring areas cannot afford to be without. The emerging conservation viewpoint suggests that the failure to recognize that the preservation of wetlands as an environmental concern divorced from urban planning and flood management is precisely to miss the point: in the case of Kashmir, wetland health and flood-resistant Srinagar are two aspects of the same goal.

mduslimbhat@gmail.com