Bar-headed geese largely give Pong wetlands a miss this year (Environment Feature)

Verdant forests, islands replete with shrubbery and swampy grasslands in the Pong Dam wetlands in the Himalayan foothills are agog with sharp calls and flapping wings of tens of thousands of feathered migratory birds.

But one noticeable regular group of visitors, the bar-headed geese, one of world's highest-altitude migrants, has largely kept away from their favourite wintering grounds this year

The reason, say ornithologists, is the high water-level in the Pong Dam's catchment area, spread over 307 sq km, which has turned the wetland ecosystem into vast open water expanse with a few grassy stretches.

"The influx of the bar-headed geese in the Pong wetlands usually crosses the 60,000 to 70,000 mark every winter. This time, as per our estimation, their number is 29,443," Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) Pradeep Thakur told IANS.

With not enough marshy areas, the bar-headed geese seem to have preferred other water bodies in the region like Harike and Nangal wetlands in Punjab this winter, he added.

But ornithologists blame lack of water management and also ecological conservation to the decline as the gregarious goose feeds at night in the grasslands on banks of water bodies.

The water level at the Pong dam stood at over 1,390 feet - against its maximum limit of 1,395 feet -- in October last year owing to the plentiful monsoon. The monsoon enables the Pong dams, which serve the irrigation requirements of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, to store large volumes of water.

"This water level was alarmingly high and didn't allow the swampy grasslands to surface. When the arrival of the bar-headed geese began in October, the high water level in Pong wetlands forced them to migrate to other nearby grasslands," an avid bird watcher told IANS.

He said still the water level in the reservoir throughout the winter was high compared to the previous years. According to the meteorological office in Shimla, the rainfall in the state in 2018 was 12 per cent over the average, after five consecutive years of remaining deficient in the state.

"For managing the Pong protected area, the Wildlife Department has to coordinate with the dam authorities to drain out the excess water from the reservoir. Otherwise, our regular winter migrants like the bar-headed geese will stop converging here," he added.

Flying thousands of kilometres from their native habitat in high-altitude lakes in Central Asia to avoid the extreme winter chill, the elegant bar-headed geese, an endangered migratory bird species, regularly descends in India.

The bird, with two distinctive black bars across its neck, starts reaching the Pong wetlands in October and stays till March-end.

At the annual waterfowl estimation in 2015, a staggering 71,800 bar-headed geese were recorded in the Pong wetlands, some 250 km from Shimla. Their number went down to 38,530 in 2018, from 52,530 in 2017.

Listed under Schedule IV of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, the global population of the bar-headed geese is believed to be around 130,000, wildlife experts say.

In Pong, their maximum flock sightings can be seen at marshes near Nagrota Suriyan, Budladha, Guglara, Sansarpur Terrace, Nandpur Batoli, Chatta, Jambal and the Rancer island.

The Pong Dam wetlands, one of the largest man-made wetlands in northern India, are currently home to 115,229 waterbirds -- birds that depend on water bodies for roosting and feeding.

(Vishal Gulati can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)

--IANS

vg/vd/vm/am