EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Explanation:  This looks like nothing more than cows and people in a field.  But they are in the heart of one of the most remarkable wetlands in south Asia: Keoladeo Ghana National Park, south of Delhi, India.  So where is the water?

It is mid-December 2002 and the middle of one of the worst droughts this national park has experienced.  Usually at this time, the low-lying areas are filled with water, wetland plants, an astounding profusion of migrating and wintering birds, ungulates, and other wildlife.  But an intense drought has struck.  This is the first recorded year in which the entire wetlands have completely dried.  The two huge lakes forming the heart of the wetland are cracked bone-dry. 

left: White-breasted Waterhen in one of the few pools left during the drought

Only a tiny corner of the wetlands has water, and that is maintained only by continual electric pumping of deep groundwater.  Nearly all the resident and wintering birds are absent.  Where are the otters, the fishing cats, the fishing eagles, the Siberian cranes?  The park manager says the fish will return from permanent water sources, such as Keoladeo Reservoir, once the monsoon rains and the flush of waters return to refill the basins.  But will these fish predators return?  

Gone also are the hundred thousand annual tourists.  Impact on the local ecotourism economy is immense.

The drought has occurred because the fall monsoons have failed to arrive, itself an event perhaps reflecting a change in the regional climate.  This isn't the first drought here, though.  Other major droughts occurred in 1987 and 1979, which caused wholesale losses of nesting and water birds, loss of overall natural diversity, and subsequent shifts in relative abundance among species.  Terrestrial species such as mynas, babblers, and shrikes increased.  

Left:  Graylag Geese trying to survive among herds of cattle in what was wetland habitat.

Known more popularly as "Bharatpur" which is actually just the name of the nearby town, the wetlands of Keoladeo Ghana National Park are actually artificial!  They were created in 1760 with the damming of a river to save the town of Bharatpur from flooding.  Later, the park was created in the 1890s by one of the Maharajas of Bharatpur as a hunting reserve.  He deepened and widened an area of existing wetland and constructed dikes and tracks.  

Hunting officially ended in 1964 but the wetlands are still maintained, now more artificially than naturally.  As shown in these photos, local people are hired to scoop out the thick muck from the bottom of the basins and build up the dikes and levees, and cattle are allowed to graze on the invading plants.  It begs the question, "what is natural?" which, in this environment, has little meaning.

During drought, many of the avian mosquito predators and competitors are eliminated, so mosquitoes increase seemingly exponentially ... along with the malaria they carry.  So there are real public health issues associated with drought.  

I walk the dikes and levees at dusk under a full moon, and I spy three jackals by their green-yellow eyeshine.  Later in the night I hear the jackals calling, perhaps in hunger, waiting for the return of the rains like most of the life of the park.

Dried wetlands at dusk

Black-winged Stilt foraging in a tiny remnant pool

Information:  Ewans, M., T.D. Singh, R. Singh, J. Hancock, et al. 1989.  Bharatpur: bird paradise.  Lustre Press Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, India. 144 pp.