State to seek Ramsar certification for Sultanpur National Park

The state forest department plans to recommend the Sultanpur National Park in Gurugram and the Bhindawas Wildlife Sanctuary in Jhajjar district for declaration as Ramsar sites

The state forest department plans to recommend the Sultanpur National Park in Gurugram and the Bhindawas Wildlife Sanctuary in Jhajjar district for declaration as Ramsar sites. Both are popular birding destinations, providing habitat for a large variety of resident and migratory species, and happen to be the only two such water bodies in Haryana with legal protection under the MoEFCC’s Wetland Rules (2017).

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Department officials confirmed that two separate proposals have been drawn up in the format required by the Ramsar Convention, and will be sent by the state government to the Centre for further consideration.

Ramsar sites — as per UNESCO’s 1971 Convention on Wetlands held in Ramsar, Iran — are wetlands of international significance. Experts and officials explained that having a Ramsar certification brings international visibility to ecologically sensitive wetlands and provides an impetus for their conservation.

Officials said on Tuesday that this proposal was first floated in 2015. “It did not go through at the time, for some reason. In 2019, we revisited the proposal, but again, it fell through. We were told last year told to start work on the proposal again. District-level teams finished their fieldwork and submitted the information to us a few months ago. Our final proposal is presently with the state government and we expect it to reach the Centre next week. From there, it will be sent to the Convention,” said ML Rajvanshi, chief conservator of forests, Haryana, on Tuesday, which was also the World Wetlands Day.

Experts lauded this as a positive step in protecting important birding areas in Sultanpur and Bhindawas, but also viewed the development with caution. “Getting a Ramsar tag is very good optically, and it does create accountability for governments to protect the wetland. But the challenge will be to maintain the area up to the required standard. This may not be very easy in Sultanpur, for example, from where we keep hearing reports of encroachments and such. It’s a good step that Haryana is taking, but we will have to see if the Ramsar Convention honours the proposal. The rules are quite strict,” said Bikram Grewal, a veteran ornithologist and a Delhi-based author.

This view was echoed by other experts, including TK Roy, state co-ordinator for Netherlands-based Wetlands International (one of the six international organisation partners that work with the Convention). “The quality of the habitat in both Bhindawas and Sultanpur has been declining, as have the number of birds that visit there every year. While it is fine to seek Ramsar certification, what is really needed in Haryana is to notify newer birding destinations, like Basai and Najafgarh, as wetlands. But the merits of doing that are still being debated in courts, while existing wetlands are in poor shape.”

Roy also referenced the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority’s zonal master plan for Sultanpur National Park, drafted in 2019 and cleared in October 2020, in which the buffer around the park has been kept at three kilometres, despite the National Green Tribunal instating an area of five kilometres as a no-construction zone.

“The anthropogenic stress on Sultanpur is significant, and it would certainly be considered by the Convention. It is common knowledge that the catchment area has seen rampant unauthorised construction,” Roy said.

Similarly in Jhajjar, experts called attention to the Mandothi wetland, located about 40 kilometres from Bhindawas, which has emerged as a popular birding destination in recent years. “Despite being an incredible wetland, Mandothi does not have the same protection as Bhindawas. Even the Dighal wetland in Jhajjar is a similar example,” said Pankaj Gupta of the Delhi Bird Foundation.