India has added five more Ramsar sites, or wetlands of international importance, bringing the number of such sites in the country to 54. These are the:
- Karikili Bird Sanctuary (Tamil Nadu)
- Pallikaranai Marsh Reserve Forest (Tamil Nadu)
- Pichavaram Mangrove (Tamil Nadu)
- Sakhya Sagar (Madhya Pradesh) and
- Pala Wetlands (Mizoram).
Pala wetland
- Pala wetland is revered and is deeply linked with the history of Mara people inhabiting the region.
- The wetland also hosts several globally threatened species, such as sambar deer (Rusa unicolor), Asiatic black bear(Ursus thibetanus), and slow loris (Nyctibetus coucang), and Hoolock gibbon (Hoolock hoolock).
- The wetland provides refuge and breeding ground for IUCN red-listed critically endangered species of animals including yellow tortoise (Indotestudo elongata), Southeast Asian giant tortoise (Manouria emys) and black softshell turtle (Nilssonia nigricans).
Ramsar wetlands importance
- India’s Ramsar wetlands are spread over 11,000 sq.km — around 10% of the total wetland area in the country — across 18 States.
- No other South Asian country has as many sites, though this has much to do with India’s geographical breadth and tropical diversity. The U.K. (175) and Mexico (142) — smaller countries than India — have the most Ramsar sites, whereas Bolivia spans the largest area with 1,48,000 sq.km under the Convention protection.
- Wetlands are extremely important for a healthy biodiversity in the country, where forests act like lungs and wetlands work like kidneys to clean the environment. The wetlands essentially act as the ‘kidneys of the landscape’, filtering and capturing sediment, and helping settle it to the bed of the wetland and the plants use these nutrients to grow which supports the whole ecosystem.
- Being designated a Ramsar site does not necessarily invite extra international funds.
- States and the Centre must ensure that these tracts of land are conserved and spared from encroachment.
- Acquiring this label also helps with a locale’s tourism potential and its international visibility.
- To be Ramsar site, however, it must meet at least one of nine criteria as defined by the Ramsar Convention of 1971, such as supporting vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered species or threatened ecological communities or, if it regularly supports 20,000 or more waterbirds or, is an important source of food for fishes, spawning ground, nursery and/or migration path on which fish stocks are dependent upon.
