Interpreting Lakes #1 – the Wetland as a concept

Backdrop

We have a set of small lakes in the campus where I stay. I love taking a small bunch of kids of our campus around and we call ourselves the Painted Storks Nature Club. They love seeing birds but need to understand the environment more.

The wetlands of Pune, where our campus is located, are severely under threat. Since our lakes harbour many resident and migratory birds safely and since our lake system is a successful example of an articial wetland, numerous groups of school and college students, birdwatchers and nature lovers visit this pplace. As a friend, I like to guie them around telling things while showing the birds.

The article below lists my talking points to instil the concept of “Wetland”.

TALKING POINTS

• What is a wetland? It is a place where the water covers the soil.

• It is a kind of habitat. (Other types of habitat include, mountains, jungles, desert, grasslands, etc).

• In CME itself besides wetland we have the following kinds of habitat –

  • Woodlands.

  • Gardens.

  • Farms.

  • Throny scrub.

  • Barren rocky area.

• Types of wetlands include:

  • Swamps and marshes.

  • Streams and rivers.

  • Lakes and ponds.

  • Mangroves.

  • Temporary and permanent ponds.

• We have the following waterbodies, guess which of these can be considered part of our wetlands:

  • Three lakes.

  • A number of ponds.

  • Nalas (sewage drains flowing in the open).

  • A 2.2 km long by 125 m wide manmade rowing channel.

  • A highly polluted river flowing along the periphery of our campus.

  • Quiet pools in disused quarries.

  • Small pools of water created by trapped rubble blocking outflow.

  • Seasonal temporary ponds and puddles.

  • Disused wells.

  • Lily ponds in gardens.

  • Water tanks storing water for fire-fighting.

• Mostly wetlands are the interface between water ecosystems (aquatic ecosystems) and land ecosystems (terrestrial ecosystems).

• In our campus we consider the interconnected lakes, ponds, marshes, nalas and the land adjoining immediately as part of one big wetland.

• This wetland is clled the SARVATRA BIRD SANCTUARY.

• Our wetland contains many birds but it also considers other kinds of life such as:

  • Plant life:

    • Plants on land e.g. Fig trees, Lantana bushes, Subabul trees.

    • Plants whose feet are in water eg Haldikunku plant, acquatic ipomea, bulrushes.

    • Plants which float in water e.g. Pistia (water lettuce), Eichhornia (water hyacinth).

    • Plants which float in water, e.g. Duckweed.

    • Plants which live in the water.

  • Animal life.

    • Birds such as cormorants, ducks, herons, kingfishers, swallows.

    • Small animals such as mongoose, palm civets, water monitor lizards, snakes.

    • Insect life, including insects which live on water, such as pond-skaters, or which have life cycles in water suchas mosquitoes and dragonflies.

    • Microscopic forms such as protozoans, plankton etc.

    • Snails.

    • Fresh water sponge.

    • Humans visiting the lake.

      They all form part of the wetland ecosystem along with water, soil, air, and weather.

• Why preserve wetlands?

  • If wetlands aren’t preserved, many different species of plants and animals would go extinct. This includes types of fish that lay their eggs in the wetlands and spend much of their time at sea. Due to this, the abundance of fish and other seafood would go down, greatly affecting fishing industries.

  • Wetlands are like filters for the water that go through them, clearing out toxins and making the water less polluted. They replenish the groundwater.

  • Many of the members towards the bottom of the food chain live in wetlands. If those are eliminated, many other ecosystems would go off balance.

  • Wetlands provide extra protection against floods, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.

  • Wetlands also provide fish, reed or building material, and peat for fuel.

  • They are a significant deterrent to flooding and drought.

  • Wetlands absorb water during wet periods ad release it during dry periods.

Freshwater wetlands have higher productivity than farmland, forests, grasslands and even marine seashore ecosystems. It supports maximum amount and maximum variety of life.

Wetlanding with WII

As I walked up the paved road for my first glimpse of the architecturally crafted buildings of the Wildlife Institute of India in Chandrabani near Dehradun,  many images flashed through my mind. I remembered the halcyon mid-eighties when the Institute functioned from the Forest Research Institute campus. I recollected the raucous times the 1993 Nandadevi expedition guys had at WII from the sheer joy of having visited the remotest wild area in the country. Now I was back, this time to attend a five day Training Course on Wetland Conservation and Management from 27 to 31 Jan 2009. I had learnt of this module from the institute’s website. My superiors were understanding and generous and so, here was I.

By virtue of having attended the first Army course on Wildlife in 1985, I consider the WII to be one of my alma maters. Sure, I knew what wetlands were! Bharatpur, Bhitarkanika and the like. Me, I came from CME Pune to get a few pointers about our four lakes. And to have a lot of fun!! I love being around hard-core wildlifers. They are a breed apart!

The Wildlife Institute of India

The Wildlife Institute immediately strikes you as different from the archetypical govt scientific institutions. You’d probably imagine – large, dusty, brown, shoebox, full of babus. What you get instead is great architecture, small, green, clean, full of intelligent dedicated people. They have a good library, wi fi, a nature walk (its true!) and a green campus adjoining the Sal forests of the Siwaliks. Most importantly, a vast fount of knowledge and experience rests in the minds of scientists who worked there.

I had applied for the training as a ‘lateral entry’ from the Army and the Dr PR Sinha the Director was kind enough to include a ‘fauji’ amonst the foresters and naturalists attending the capsule. But nature-lovers soon connect, and I did NOT feel like a fish out of water – instead I felt that I came home. The beginning started with a lecture on what was a wetland. I was surprised to learn that the best and most accurate definition of a wetland was given by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

The Wetland Conservation batch with the instructors! Final day after receiving certificates.

We were a motley crew, comprising a handful of forestors, some foreign students, some eager young WWF field workers and a jaded armyman in the form of yours truly. This led to an excellent atmosphere, leg-pulling and mutual sharing of experiences.

The thread of instruction very soon plunged into details but since it illustrated profusely on slides and the teachers bantered with us, we were soon at home with terms such as “ramsar convention’ and ‘palustrine’ and ‘mangal’. Now its not my aim to reproduce what was taught there but I learnt that our lakes were not lakes but a wetland and were value-added by the presence of a heronry.

The most amazing things I learnt were that wetlands are very critical biodiversity hotspots and rate higher than all types of forests. They are more important in that an acre of wetland has 6 to 8 times more productivty than agriculture and more than that of normal forests. We were told the intriguing stories of wetlands such as Bhitarkanika, Mannar, Chilika, Asan, Wular Lake and high altitude wetlands across the Himalayas.

The WII overfed us with an official dinner and two more official high teas to boot. They gave us a lot of goodies, including the WII bag, tie, numerous CDs and best of all – a copy of Kasmiericzak’s (I give up I just cant spell or pronounce him right) book on Indian Birds!

Well, since I’m plugging the WII, I think I’ll mention that they did have one drawback. Yours truly was unable to show off his blog as as all blogs had been firewalled for security reasons! That small hitch apart, I felt really good to be there. We were not talked down to and very hospitably treated which is much more than one can say about other places today.

Overheard in the class! – ”Are storks edible?”

The Living Lake

The Upper Lake at CME, Dapodi, Pune.  May 2008

If  you approach the Upper CME Lake cautiously on the Nasik road itself and halt a few metres from the culvert right next to the lake, you can see a plethora of bird life on the banks. What appears to be a melee soon distinguishes itself into a large number of interesting objects each asking for your attention.

The grass bank teams with Egrets, completely white with fine feathers on head or chest. Plump Purple Moorhens with basketball shaped bodies and red wattles on their hands gambol around on the mud. Staid Grey and Purple Herons with sharp spear-like beaks and long eyelashes which extend backwards beyond their heads stand immobile with S-shaped necks coiled like springs. Suddenly the bird strikes forward and comes up with a frog which is summarily gobbled up before they strike another pose.

The lake is well stocked with fish and supports a large community of resident fish-eaters such as cormorants, herons and storks. (Photo:Girish Vaze)

The piece de resistance of this view point are the Painted Storks, the largest birds residing here, with long beaks slightly turned at the end, egg yolky in colour, red eye patches and with delicate pink feathering on their backs reminiscent of the flamingo. It steps forth with measured step of an arthritic delicately probing as it goes for delicacies in the mud. Sprinkled amongst the storks are the Black-headed White Ibis, with curved beaks, resembling undertakers. Silently the birds plunge their beak in the morass for titbits for Ibis, unlike other birds, do not call.

The associated reedbeds and grass patches of the CME lakes support inordinate populations of Purple Swamphens! (Photo: Girish Vaze)

The water gently ripples from the breeze of crystal clear air causes the lake to band the landscape. Above the blue-grey water is a green band of grass and rushes. They are punctuated with water birds. Most prominent are the completely black Cormorants which dive into the water, upturn and fish coming up for a breather with body underwater and only the neck above the surface looking like a snake-bird. When the fishing is done, they return to their congregation on a tree next to the culvert or stand on dead tree trunks with wings spread wide open to dry their wings for as you know cormorants lack the oil glands possessed by ducks which prevent their feathers from getting waterlogged.

Speaking of Duck, there are very few on this lake. They are to be found on the CTW, middle and lower lakes with a few skeins at other ponds in the campus. We shall meet them next when we visit the CTW Lake. The black duck-like birds with white on their faces on their foreheads and beak floating amongst the water hyacinth are Coot, a different kind of water-bird. Some of the browner and smaller individuals among them on the shore are the juveniles of the last breeding season which are yet to strike out on their own.

The setting sun hangs a while poised above the horizon as a whiff of the cloying smell of decaying vegetation is whisked on the cool breeze. In the peace punctuated by the squawk of a heron above the low pitched rumple of the rowing channel machinery can be heard coming back to laager after a day’s work. A large fish jumps well out of the water, showing off its scales, confident that there is no danger from the ubiquitous Kingfishers so late in the day.

Slowly darkness falls, the cormorants fly off in batches, aligned in oblique lines to their nesting place across the River Mutha. Occasional Vs of duck can now be seen as they move to their night time foraging in the fields. The storks, egrets and herons settle down on the bunch of trees which they have selected as a heronry on the other side of the lake. It is now time for us to go home having enjoyed some of that quality of life which so many aspire to, so few get and which is already there within reach only requiring us to open our eyes and drink it all in.

(This writeup first appeared on CME Weekly in Jun 2008).

Photo Credits: Girish Vaze. Copyrighted. His email available on request.