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Flamingos in Seri-Bhandup suburbs. |
Mumbai: Maharashtra
will identify and categorise its more than 200 large or small
wetlands and make a bid for UN recognition in order to get more
funds for their conservation.
The state is blessed with abundant wetlands in coastal areas, near
lakes, rivers or mountains, which are permanently saturated with
surface or ground water and play an important role in the state's
ecosystem. The wetlands also support a variety of plant, marine
and avian life and are credited with several benefits to the local
environment - cooling the atmosphere, water purification, flood
control, and giving stability to the shoreline.
Besides, these crucial natural resources offer rich food for the
hundreds of species of birds, both local and migratory, from
within India and even other countries, as well as aquatic and
amphibian creatures that live there.
For starters, the state has zeroed in on six major wetlands: Sewri
in Mumbai, Ujni in Pune, Namdur-Madhyameshwar in Nashik, Jayakwadi
in Aurangabad, Lonar in Buldhana and Navegaon in Gondia.
"The Ramsar Convention, 1971, has listed nine specific criteria
and all these six wetlands conform to most of those requirements.
We have already initiated the process to identify them, then send
the recommendation to the central government," state Principal
Chief Conservator of Forests S.H.W. Naqvi told IANS.
Naqvi is confident that in the backdrop of the recent UN World
Heritage status accorded to the Western Ghats, the case for
Maharashtra's six important wetlands becomes stronger and its bid
for a similar international recognition more valid. After the
central government submits the proposal for approval under the
Ramsar Convention and the coveted status is granted, funds would
be released for systematic conservation of these wetlands for the
present and future generations, Naqvi said.
The selection of Mumbai - the country's commercial hub and most
populated urban centre with 17 million human beings - is
particularly noteworthy, according to experts.
The salt-pans, marshes and wetlands on the 18 sq km Sewri-Bhandup
belt on the northeastern part of Mumbai is a major hub for
migratory pink flamingos from Gujarat each winter, said
environmentalist D. Stalin, Project Director of NGO Vanashakti.
"Starting next month, Mumbai will witness over 25,000 magnificent
flamingos coming to live and feed in the Bhandup-Sewri wetlands.
Earlier, when the Uran region on the mainland across Mumbai was
not degraded, it used to attract over 100,000 flamingos," Stalin
told IANS.
However, since 1994, these large birds, mainly the lesser flamingo
and greater flamingo varieties, adopted a new home - the 18 square
km wetlands of Sewri-Bhandup in northeastern Mumbai, he said.
In December 2011, Vanashakti had demanded that the state
government declare this stretch as an exclusive 'Flamingo
Sanctuary' for which preliminary work is currently under way.
The Ramsar Convention, 1971, held in Iran, on Wetlands of
International Importance, is the only global intergovernmental
environmental treaty which provides the framework for national
action and international cooperation for conserving and proper
utilisation of wetlands and their resources for sustainable
development around the world.
The Convention has used a broad definition of the types of
wetlands covered, including natural ones like lakes, rivers,
swamps, marshes, wet grasslands, peatlands, oases, estuaries,
deltas, tidal flats, coastal marine areas, mangroves and coral
reefs, and manmade sites like fish ponds, rice paddies, reservoirs
and salt-pans.
In India, a major project to identify all wetlands in the country
was launched last decade by the Ministry of Environment and
Forests in collaboration with the Maharashtra Remote Sensing
Applications Centre, Nagpur, and the Indian Space Research
Organisation's (ISRO) Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad.
It culminated in a massive National Wetlands Atlas as part of the
National Wetland Inventory and Assessment, offering details of all
the important, big and small and varied wetlands across the
country.
(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at q.najmi@ians.in)
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