Kaziranga Water Crisis

Wild animals in the world-famous Kaziranga National Park have been facing a severe crisis of drinking water in the past couple of weeks due to the absence of rains in the past few months. This is an early signal of an imminent water crisis that Assam may be facing in the days to come. As reported in the Saturday edition of this newspaper, most water bodies inside the national park, including beels, pukhuris and other wetlands, and streams flowing through it, have dried up. Water bodies like beels and swamps constitute about five per cent of the total surface area of Kaziranga, and together with the rivers, rivulets and streams flowing through the park, they constitute a vital source of drinking water for the park animals. A recent survey has revealed that there are about 150 water bodies inside Kaziranga and that these sustain the rich aquatic floral diversity of the park. Wild animals need a lot of water. They just don’t need water to drink but also for wallowing, and this is more in the case of the one-horned rhinos and the wild buffalos, as well as in the case of elephants. While the water level of the Brahmaputra, which flows right through the national park from east to west, has gone down due to less water coming down from the Eastern Himalayas, a number of streams and rivulets flowing down from the Karbi Anglong hills in the south have also dried up. Absence of rains is, however, not the sole reason behind this drying up of rivers and streams and other water bodies in Kaziranga. Rapid destruction of forest and green cover too is a major reason, and this is solely the contribution of human beings. The presence of water bodies inside Kaziranga is also a reason for the presence of a large number of resident birds in the national park, while migratory birds arrive here in large numbers from faraway places like Siberia due to the presence of rich aquatic life here. Moreover, Kaziranga’s diverse aquatic life is also very rich, with over sixty fish species, the endangered freshwater dolphin, and various turtle species thriving in the wetlands, thus adding to the uniqueness of Kaziranga. Unnatural or untimely drying up of water bodies can be a danger signal for Kaziranga as a whole, and the concerned authorities should wake up to it and take adequate long-term measures to save Kaziranga. The same might be happening in other national parks and wildlife sanctuaries too because of the changing rainfall pattern and less rainfall across the state.