Bharatpur National Park and Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary Rajasthan

WORLD HERITAGE KEOLADEO NATIONAL PARK RAJASTHAN INDIA

This Bharatpur National Park or Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary former duck-hunting reserve of the Maharajas is India’s major wintering area for large numbers of aquatic birds and one of India’s main birdwatching sites. Some 370 species of birds from Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, China and Siberia, including the rare Siberian crane, have been recorded in the Park.

The Bharatpur National Park or Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary area lies on the edge of the Gangetic plain near the margin of the Thar desert in a depression at the junction of the Gambhir and Banaganga rivers which regularly flooded twice a year, inundating the city of Bharatpur. In the mid 18th century a flood control weir, the Ajan Bundh, was built one kilometre south of the Park, to form a shallow lake, 3,270 ha in area, which was drawn on to flood the depression created by excavations for the bund. This was first done in 1901 to create a patchwork of marshes meticulously maintained by a system of canals, sluices and dykes. Normally, water from the Gambhir river was fed from the Ajan Bundh into the marshes twice a year from the floodwaters, first in mid-July soon after the onset of the monsoon, and secondly in late September or October when the Bundh was drained ready for cultivation in winter.

Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary

 The area is flooded to a depth of 1-2m throughout the monsoon between July and September, after which the water level drops. From February onwards the land begins to dry out until by June only a little water remains. For much of the year the wetland covers only a third of the Park. In the 1980s upstream diversions and deforestation began to dry up the supply from the Banaganga river and in 1991 a dam was built on the Ghambhir at Panchana, 90 km south. In 2004, the state government, under political pressure to retain the water for farmers in the valley downstream, reduced the annual water flow from the dam from 15 million m3 to 510,000 m3.

Farmers also sometimes divert the released water for themselves. Recent natural and man-made droughts in 2004, 2006 and 2007 dried out the impoundments, enabling an invasion of weed trees and many birds deserted the area. Soils are predominantly alluvial; some clay has formed as a result of the periodic inundations.

This is a climate of hot summers and freezing winter cold. During 1988, the mean maximum temperatures ranged from 20.9°C in January to 47.8°C in May, while the mean temperature varied from 6.8°C in December to 26.5°C in June. The mean relative humidity varies from 62% in March to 83% in December. The mean annual precipitation is 662mm, with rain falling on an average of 36 days per year, mainly during the monsoon in July and August. But between 2004 and 2007, there was a long period of drought, broken only in 2010 and 2011.

Bharatpur National Park or Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary Vegetation

The surrounding countryside is semi-arid plain where only the Park has much vegetation: the term ghana means thicket. Some 350 plant species have been recorded (Brar,1996). The Park itself is a mosaic of tropical dry deciduous forest (1,100 ha), scrub woodland with dry grassland where forest has been degraded, shrub savanna and grass savanna. Swamps and impounded wetland cover about 1,000 ha. The forests, mostly in the northeast of the Park, are dominated by kayim Mitragyna parvifolia, jamun Syzygium cuminii and babul Acacia nilotica. Neem Azadirachta inidca, probably introduced, is occasional.

Bharatpur National Park OR Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary

The open woodland is mostly A. nilotica and A. leucophloea with a small amount of kandi Prosopis spicigera and ber Zizyphus mauritiana. Scrublands are dominated by zizphus and kair Capparis sepiaria. Piloo Salvadora oleoides and S. persica are virtually the only woody plants found in areas of saline soil. Khus grass Vetiveria zizanioides and Desmostachya bipinnata formerly harvested by villagers are spreading. The aquatic vegetation includes 96 species of submerged and emergent plants and is a valuable source of food for waterfowl.

However, the alien water hyacinth Eichhornia crassipes and the aquatic knotgrass Paspalum distichum, a perennial amphibious grass, proliferated, filling in waterways and impoundments (Brar,1996). Recent droughts and reduction in the water supply killed them off but have permitted the expansion of shrubby woodland of the useful but equally invasive fast growing vilayati babul or mesquite Prosopis juliflora. Saxena (1975) lists the Park's flora.

Bharatpur National Park and Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary

Bharatpur National Park FAUNA

There are 29 species of mammals recorded (Brar,1996) but large predators such as leopard Panthera pardus were deliberately exterminated by 1964, and during long droughts water-dependent species disperse. Primates include rhesus macaque Macaca mulatta and langur Presbytis entellus. Small carnivores include Bengal fox Vulpes bengalensis, jackal Canis aureus, striped hyena Hyaena hyaena, smooth-coated otter Lutra perspicillata (VU: about 30), Indian grey mongoose Herpestes edwardsi, common palm civet Paradoxurus hermaphroditus, small Indian civet Viverricula indica, fishing cat Prionailurus viverrina (EN), leopard cat F. bengalensis and jungle cat F. chaus (Haque & Vijayan, 1988). Ungulates include wild boar Sus scrofa [200-250], blackbuck Antilope cervicapra (60), chital Cervus axis (350)[230-260], sambar C. unicolor, hog deer C. porcinus, nilgai Boselaphus tragocamelus (480) [160-180] and domestic water buffalo Bubalus bubalis and feral cattle [950-1,000]. Other mammals include Indian porcupine Hystrix indica and Indian hare Lepus nigricollis. Round brackets give the 1980 census figures, square brackets the 1988 census (Vijayan, 1989).

Until the recent droughts the Bharatpur National Park location in the Gangetic Plain made it an unrivalled breeding site for waterbirds and a renowned heronry. During the monsoon an estimated 65 million fish-fry are carried by floods into the impoundments every year, providing the food base for the large numbers of wading and fish-eating birds: herons, storks and cormorants and wintering migrant ducks (Milne, 1997). Some 375 bird species have been recorded, a third being migrant and overwintering. It has a unique assemblage of wetland species, and some 15 species of Ciconiformes nest in the heronry.

The commonest of these are gadwall Anas strepera, shoveler A. clypeata, spotbill A. poecilorhyncha, common teal, A. crecca, cotton teal Nettapus coromandelianus,, whistling teal, Dendrocygna javanica, tufted duck Aythya fuligula, comb duck Sarkidiornis melanotos, little cormorant Phalacrocorax niger, great cormorant P. carbo, Indian shag P. fuscicollis, ruff Philomachus pugnax, probably the most abundant wader, painted stork Ibis leucocephalus, white spoonbill Platalea leucorodia, Asian open-billed stork Anastomus oscitans, oriental ibis Threskiornis melanocephalus, darter Anhinga melanogaster, common sandpiper Tringa hypoleucos, wood sandpiper T. glareola and green sandpiper T. ochropus.

Demoiselle crane Anthropoides virgo and Sarus crane Grus antigone with its spectacular courtship dance, are also found here. The Bharatpur National Park was the last known wintering ground in India of the western population of Siberian crane Grus leucogeranus (CR). Despite reaching a total of 41 birds during the winter of 1984-85 (ICBP, 1985) numbers steadily decreased and in the winter of 1993/94, none were observed (K. Rao pers. comm.,1995). In 1996, four birds wintered in the Park, and in 1997 two adults and a young bird were seen (Milne,1997). There is only one other known western population, at Feredunkenar in Iran, but a thriving eastern population of some 1,350 cranes has been discovered wintering in Poyang Lake Nature Reserve, Jiangxi, China.

There are 13 species of snakes, 5 lizards, 7 turtles and 7 amphibians (WWF-India, 2006).These include water snakes, Indian python Python molurus, banded krait Bungarus fasciatus, green rat snake Zaocys nigromarginatus, turtles Lissemys punctata, Trionyx gangeticus, Kachuga tectum and Hardella thurgi and monitor lizard Varanus sp. Some 50 species of fish have been identified (Kumar & Vijayan, 1988). Protozoa, zooplankton and macrobenthic oligochaeta, insects and molluscs have been studied, especially under drought conditions (Mahajan et al., 1981a, b & c). A discussion on the aquatic macro-invertebrates, terrestrial invertebrates, fish, herpetofauna, birds and mammals is given in Vijayan (1989).

Bharatpur National Park OR Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary

CONSERVATION MANAGEMENT

The boundaries are clearly delineated by a 32 km-long, 2m-high stone wall, built 1977-81 and being repaired and heightened to 2.6m in 2008. Owing to the dense human settlement around the Park, there can be no buffer zone. The wall totally encloses the Bharatpur National Park to prevent trespassing by humans and domestic livestock, but also bars local people from the use of certain temples and from collecting khus grass, fuelwood and forest products on which they had traditionally depended; it also excluded a population of some 2,500 buffalo and cattle which previously grazed there. However, the road from Bharatpur town bisecting the Bharatpur National Park was relocated outside the boundaries which greatly reduced the disturbance by visitors. This intensifies during the winter when visitors come to see the cranes. The local people see this government-sponsored tourism as a cost imposed on them in their lost opportunities to use the area.

The management objective has been to allow the area to flood and dry out annually, rather than exist as a system of permanent marshes. Some 15 million cu.m of water for the wetlands was supplied from the shallow holding lake outside the boundaries, and the water levels were regulated to benefit waterfowl. If the wetland is in danger of drying out completely, water can be pumped from four boreholes to ensure the survival of some aquatic flora and fauna until the monsoon. However, this is brackish and lacks the nutrients of living floodwaters. Two deep pools, one excavated for the purpose, also serve as natural wildlife reservoirs.

The crisis created by the drying of out of the land which caused the birds to desert and the weed mesquite to flourish focussed national and international concern on the need for alternative sources of water from nearby canals (the Govardhar wastewater drain, the Chiksana canal and the Dholpur-Bharatpur drinking water project (Boojh et al.,2008). In 2005 this led to a campaign by the Tourism and Wildlife Society of India and others to take the dispute to the Supreme Court. Another campaign in early 2007, organised by an Eco-Development Committee, was a program of controlled deforestation.

Villagers were co-opted to fell and systematically eradicate the weed trees and take the wood for themselves which greatly improved relations between the Bharatpur National Park authorities and the surrounding people (Sebastian, 2007; Boojh The management objective has been to allow the area to flood and dry out annually, rather than exist as a system of permanent marshes. Some 15 million cu.m of water for the wetlands was supplied from the shallow holding lake outside the boundaries, and the water levels were regulated to benefit waterfowl. If the wetland is in danger of drying out completely, water can be pumped from four boreholes to ensure the survival of some aquatic flora and fauna until the monsoon. However, this is brackish and lacks the nutrients of living floodwaters.

Two deep pools, one excavated for the purpose, also serve as natural wildlife reservoirs. The crisis created by the drying of out of the land which caused the birds to desert and the weed mesquite to flourish focussed national and international concern on the need for alternative sources of water from nearby canals (the Govardhar wastewater drain, the Chiksana canal and the Dholpur-Bharatpur drinking water project (Boojh et al.,2008). In 2005 this led to a campaign by the Tourism and Wildlife Society of India and others to take the dispute to the Supreme Court. Another campaign in early 2007, organised by an Eco-Development Committee, was a program of controlled deforestation. Villagers were co-opted to fell and systematically eradicate the weed trees and take the wood for themselves which greatly improved relations between the Park authorities and the surrounding people (Sebastian, 2007; Boojh