SYLLABUS SECTION: GS III (ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY)

WHY IN NEWS?

Recently, Union environment ministry has announce that India has designate five new Ramsar sites as ‘wetlands of international importance’.

After this the number of Ramsar sites has been increase to 54 from 49 in the country.

1)Tamil Nadu:

Karikili Bird Sanctuary:
Home to cormorants, egrets, grey heron, open-bills stork, darter, spoonbill, white ibis, night herons, grebes, grey pelican among others.
Pallikaranai Marsh Reserve Forest :
One of the last remaining natural wetlands of Chennai city.
Pichavaram Mangrove:
It supports several threatened species, such as the critically endangered great white-bellied heron, spoon-billed sandpiper, the endangered spotted greenshank and the vulnerable olive ridley turtle.
It is one of the largest mangrove ecosystems in India with littoral and swamp forest habitats, located between the estuaries of the Vellar and Kollidam rivers.
Trees here are permanently root under a few feets of water.

2) Mizoram:

Pala Wetland:
It is the largest natural wetland in Mizoram.
The wetland, a deep lake (over 16 metres deep), supports a rich diversity of animal species, including at least seven mammals, 222 birds, 11 amphibians and 21 reptiles.
The wetland provides an excellent habitat for the sambar deer, wild boars and barking deer. It’s also a habitat for the endangered Hoolock gibbon and Phayre’s leaf monkey.
The Pala wetland is reveres by the local Mara people

3) Madhya Pradesh:

Ramsar Convention, is an intergovernmental treaty for the conservation of wetlands.
Under this contracting parties are expected to identify and place suitable wetlands onto the ‘list of wetlands of international importance’, also known as the Ramsar List.
Ramsar Convention was adopted in 1971.

A wetland is an ecosystem flooded by water, seasonally or permanently.

A wetland can be considered internationally important if any of the following nine criteria apply:

Criterion 1: “it contains a representative, rare, or unique example of a natural or near-natural wetland type found within the appropriate biogeographic region.”
2: “it supports vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered species or threatened ecological communities.”
3: “it supports populations of plant and/or animal species important for maintaining the biological diversity of a particular biogeographic region.”
4: “it supports plant and/or animal species at a critical stage in their life cycles, or provides refuge during adverse conditions.”
5: “it regularly supports 20,000 or more water birds.”
6: “it regularly supports 1% of the individuals in a population of one species or subspecies of water bird.”
7: “it supports a significant proportion of indigenous fish subspecies, species or families, life-history stages, species interactions and/or populations that are representative of wetland benefits and/or values and thereby contributes to global biological diversity.”
Criterion 8: “it is an important source of food for fishes, spawning ground, nursery and/or migration path on which fish stocks, either within the wetland or elsewhere, depend.”
Criterion 9: “it regularly supports 1% of the individuals in a population of one species or subspecies of wetland-dependent non-avian animal species.”