As silt and settlements encroach, Kashmir’s fragile wetlands struggle to survive—so do the birds, fish, and fisherfolk who depend on them.
By Khursheed Dar
Kashmir is not only a valley of mountains and rivers, not only a spectacle of chinars turning crimson in autumn or meadows bursting with wildflowers in spring. It is also, and perhaps most vitally, a valley of water—veins and arteries that run like blue threads through its fragile body. These are the wetlands. Hokarsar, Haigam, Mirgund, Shallabugh, Wular. And countless others, unnamed and unnoticed, scattered like fragments of broken mirrors across the landscape. They are the lungs of Kashmir, breathing silently, sustaining life not just for the valley but for a migratory world that stretches from the Arctic tundra to the Indian plains.
Hokarsar, once celebrated as the “queen of wetlands,” is today struggling for breath. Its shimmering waters have thinned into silt, its lifelines of canals blocked and choked. Yet the mallards return, circling stubbornly in hope. Within months, the skies will thrash with wings—pintails, gadwalls, shovellers, teals—pilgrims from Siberia and Central Asia. But the question hangs heavy: will they find refuge here, or only mud and silence?
Further north, Haigam in Baramulla district stands disfigured, bewildered at its own decline. Once spread wide with reed beds and fish, it has shrunk into patches of water and wasteland. Mirgund, fragile yet vital, sandwiched between Sopore and Baramulla, still survives as a resting stop along the invisible aerial highway of migratory birds. Shallabugh in Ganderbal, which once held half a million birds in its arms, is now gasping, reduced to fragments of its former self. And Wular—Asia’s great freshwater epic, mentioned in chronicles and sung in folklore, guardian against floods and regulator of climate—too is shrinking under the twin pressures of silt and settlements.
This loss is not only about birds or water. When wetlands vanish, cultures fade with them. The haenz, the fisherfolk who rowed their shikaras, lose not only their livelihood but their very identity. Children who once chased dragonflies by reed beds now wander near garbage heaps. A silence falls over the landscape, and with it the songs of the valley change.
Yet, amid despair, there are voices insisting on hope. Researchers, poets, birdwatchers, ordinary villagers—all remind us that these wetlands are not wastelands but temples of survival. Professor A. R. Yousuf calls them the “kidneys and lungs of the valley.” Others, like Dr. Riyaz Ahmad Dar, Dr. Irfan Rashid, and Dr. Gowhar Naseem, have painstakingly shown through science and fieldwork what happens when wetlands are destroyed. But science alone cannot rescue them.
Dr. Asad Rahmani, former Director of the Bombay Natural History Society, who has spent decades studying birds and habitats in Kashmir, puts it simply: people matter. Even small voices can shift the tide. For over fifteen years, he has urged communities, students, teachers, and birdwatchers to see wetlands as living beings worth protecting. He believes that if even a fraction of society speaks for them, stands by them, and acts for them, the difference will be felt. Protection is not a responsibility to be outsourced to distant authorities; it belongs first to those who live by these waters, walk their banks, and breathe their air.
The call, then, must be to us—the people. To remember that wetlands are not luxuries but sponges against floods. Without Hokarsar and Shallabugh, Srinagar is far more vulnerable to disasters like the 2014 floods. Wetlands recharge groundwater, filter pollution, nourish cattle, sustain agriculture, and serve as nurseries for fish. They are pit stops for migratory birds carrying the memory of continents. To destroy them is to erase the very idea of migration and continuity.
What can be done? Perhaps it begins with memory. Take children not only to the Mughal Gardens but also to Hokarsar, to sit quietly and watch the wings descend. Tell them stories of Wular, of fisherfolk, of floods softened by its vast waters. Create eco-clubs where wetlands are classrooms of survival, not neglected dumping grounds. Encourage local communities to guard their reed beds, clean their edges, and see them as extensions of their own homes. Birdwatchers can become custodians, schools can adopt wetlands, poets can compose their laments, and villagers can revive their streams.
This is not a battle for governments alone. It is, rather, a relationship—a love affair between people and water, between memory and place. If each family living near a wetland were to take even the smallest responsibility—keeping one canal unclogged, planting reeds, resisting the urge to dump garbage—an entire ecology could be revived.
For if Kashmir is paradise, then wetlands are its breath. And a paradise without breath is no paradise at all—it is only a corpse dressed in flowers.
In three months’ time, when the skies above the valley fill with wings—geese and swans and ducks arriving from Kazakhstan and Mongolia—let them find not silence and sewage but waters that still hold them, reeds that still whisper welcome. Then perhaps future generations will not look back in despair, asking how a valley famed for its waters allowed them to die. Perhaps the answer will not be silence but the sound of wings returning again and again, to the breathing lungs of Kashmir.
The author is a prominent columnist of Kashmir, known for his insightful research on Kashmiri culture, society, and Sufism.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of this Magazine. The author can be reached at [email protected]
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