Opinion | Kashmir’s Wetlands Are Disappearing, and the Birds Are the First to Notice

Every winter, migratory birds arrive in Kashmir from breeding grounds as far away as Siberia and Central Asia, following flyway routes that have brought them to the valley’s wetlands for longer than anyone has been keeping records. Hokersar, on the outskirts of Srinagar, is the best known of these sites, but it’s part of a wider network i.e, Wular Lake, Shallabugh, Hygam, Mirgund, that together have historically formed one of the more significant wintering grounds for waterfowl anywhere on the Central Asian Flyway. The scale can still be impressive in a good season, with tens of thousands of ducks, geese, and other waterbirds settling across these wetlands. But the trend over recent decades, tracked through periodic bird census counts conducted by the wildlife department and independent researchers, has generally pointed toward smaller and less consistent numbers than what older records describe.

The wetlands themselves have shrunk considerably in physical extent. Hokersar, often described as the “queen of wetlands” in Kashmir, has lost a substantial share of its historical area to a mix of agricultural encroachment, illegal construction, and the same siltation pressures that afflict Dal Lake, fed by streams carrying sediment from a deforested and increasingly built-up catchment. Wular Lake, one of Asia’s larger freshwater lakes, has seen even more dramatic contraction over the twentieth century, with encroachment for willow plantations and paddy cultivation eating into what was historically open water and marsh habitat.

Willow plantation is a specific and somewhat under-discussed driver of wetland loss in Kashmir. Willow wood has commercial value, used in everything from cricket bat manufacturing — Kashmir willow bats are a recognized product category — to basic construction and fuel needs, and planting willow on reclaimed wetland margins has been a common practice for decades, sometimes with informal administrative tolerance, sometimes as outright encroachment. The economic logic is straightforward for the individuals involved, but the cumulative ecological effect has been a steady conversion of open marsh and shallow water habitat into forested land that no longer functions as wetland at all.

Pollution compounds the physical shrinkage. Agricultural runoff carrying fertilizer and pesticide residue reaches these wetlands from surrounding farmland, and where wetlands sit close to populated areas, domestic sewage adds further nutrient load, encouraging the same kind of weed overgrowth and eutrophication that affects Dal Lake. For migratory birds, degraded water quality and reduced open water area both matter directly waterfowl need open water for feeding and roosting, and heavily weed-choked or polluted wetlands become less hospitable even where some water remains.

The conservation response has included Ramsar Convention recognition for several of Kashmir’s wetlands, Wular Lake and Hokersar both carry Ramsar site status, designating them as wetlands of international importance and, in theory, committing the government to specific conservation obligations. In practice, Ramsar designation has provided a useful framework for conservation planning and has helped attract some dedicated funding, but it hasn’t been sufficient on its own to reverse the encroachment and degradation trends, which continue to be driven by local economic pressures that outweigh, in the near term, the diffuse long-term value of wetland conservation.

Local communities living around these wetlands have a genuinely complicated relationship with them. Fishing and reed harvesting have historically provided livelihoods to families in wetland-adjacent villages, and in that sense the wetlands’ ecological health directly supports local economies. But the same communities also face land pressure and limited alternative livelihood options, which creates incentive for the kind of incremental encroachment, a paddy field extended a little further into marsh, a willow plantation established on land that used to flood seasonally, that adds up, over years and across many households, to substantial habitat loss.

Researchers tracking bird populations describe a pattern that’s become familiar across many of the world’s major flyways: species that depend on very specific wetland conditions tend to decline faster than generalist species that can adapt to a wider range of habitat. Some duck and goose species that were once reliably abundant in Kashmir’s winter wetland counts have become less consistent presences, while more adaptable species have held up better. This kind of shift in species composition, rather than simple overall population decline, is often the more sensitive early indicator that wetland ecosystems are under stress, even before total bird numbers drop dramatically.

There have been restoration efforts at Hokersar and elsewhere, desilting operations, boundary demarcation intended to prevent further encroachment, weed clearance, run through the wildlife department with support from various conservation programs. These have produced localized improvements, but the wetlands’ overall trajectory over the past several decades has been one of net loss, punctuated by restoration efforts that slow but haven’t reversed the decline.

What’s at stake extends beyond the birds themselves, though they’re the most visible indicator. Wetlands function as natural flood buffers for the Kashmir valley, absorbing excess water during heavy rainfall and snowmelt periods, a role that became starkly relevant during the 2014 floods that devastated large parts of Srinagar and the wider valley. Reduced wetland area means reduced natural flood absorption capacity, connecting wetland conservation to flood risk management in ways that go well beyond bird-watching or ecological preservation for its own sake. Whether that broader stake translates into more effective protection than the birds alone have managed to secure remains, so far, an open question.

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