Ramsar tag eludes Dhanauri wetland again, activists call for serious steps

On Saturday, when the Union environment ministry announced the names of four wetlands that were recognised as Ramsar sites — wetland of international importance — the absence of Gautam Budh Nagar’s Dhanauri was noticed

On Saturday, when the Union environment ministry announced the names of four wetlands that were recognised as Ramsar sites — wetland of international importance — the absence of Gautam Budh Nagar’s Dhanauri was noticed.

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Spread across 101 hectares, Dhanauri wetland serves as a sanctuary for the vulnerable (as listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature) state bird of Uttar Pradesh, the Sarus crane. Not only did Dhanauri missed out on the Ramsar tag, but it is also yet to be conferred the status of “sanctuary” for the crane that would give it additional protection.

While officials from the district’s forest department said that they are working on getting the Ramsar tag, experts said that the “government is only protecting the already protected”.

Noida-based birder Anand Arya, who discovered the Dhanauri wetland and had been pushing for its conservation pointed out that all four sites declared Ramsar on Saturday were “either wildlife sanctuary or bird Sanctuaries”.

“It seems that the government is not making efforts to save unrecognised or non-notified wetlands and only adding its tally of Ramsar sites by declaring the already protected sites like national parks or bird sanctuaries. Thol and Wadhwana (both in Gujarat) are bird sanctuaries, Sultanpur is a national park and Bhindawas is a wildlife sanctuary (both in Haryana) ,” said Anand Arya.

Ramsar sites are the wetlands of international importance. India is a signatory to the Ramsar Convention held in 1971 in Iran that seeks to recognise and protect the important wetlands of the world. India has a total of 45 Ramsar sites and the surface area covered by these sites is now 1,083,322 hectares.

“The forest department has been sitting on it (proposal to forward Dhanauri as a Ramsar site) for over seven years. So far, they did not even submit the detailed study to the Ramsar secretariat to make a case for it,” said Anand Arya.

In 2018, the district forest department first sent its proposal to declare the waterbody as a wetland under Wetland Rules 2017, the state government has initiated the process and appointed a nodal officer for the task.

In September 2020, the officials from Wetland International and state forest department began ground inspection and terrain analysis to make a case for the wetland to be declared as a Ramsar site and a Sarus crane sanctuary. Later that year, the forest department roped in WWF, officials said.

“We had been working with different organisations like WWF also to gather a lot of information regarding Dhanauri This is a tedious task. We are however now in much better position and within next one month the forest department will send its proposal and detailed reports to the Ramsar secretariat to name Dhanauri a Ramsar site” said Pramod Kumar Srivastava, divisional forest officer, GB Nagar.

Once home to over 211 species of birds the Dhanauri wetland has suffered a habitat loss and drop in bird populations over the years. In April this year, the forest department has to rushed to fill the wetland using borewells after it ran dry for the first time following high temperatures and unregulated farming in the area.

In January, the Asian Waterbird Census (AWC) 2021, held by Wetlands International South Asia and the district forest department, found over four times drop in bird population as compared to 2020. The AWC 2021 found only 1,344 birds against 6,227 birds in January last year.