KRISHNA MB: Urban Lakes as Outdoor Labs

Have you ever stood under a flock of a thousand migratory ducks or sandpipers flying low overhead, all flying in unison at some seventy kilometres per hour, turning and twisting as if they were all controlled by the same remote device? Or, have you ever stood under a flock of a hundred pelicans sailing over, each with a wingspan that is twice your height? Well you could do both even if you consider yourself “trapped” in a city like Bangalore! You are very unlikely to forget the experience for the rest of your life. More so if you are a child. And this is where we begin.

The recent occupation of the larger lakes of Bangalore by the endangered Spot-billed Pelican (which comes into the first schedule of our Wildlife Protection Act) has drawn much attention of the media and the birdwatching community. Surprising that these huge birds should turn up in a city you might think! But read on.

Urban centres are becoming increasingly important in becoming refuges for wild birds. With the loss of agriculture, the first casuality when cities grow, urban lakes tend to retain water right through the year. They also receive a fair amount of sewage or sullage contamination, which provides nutrients to the aquatic system that dramatically encourages productivity. There is more algae, more aquatic plants and more fish growing in these urban lakes than their non-urban counterparts. This encourages birds. Most of these birds are very visible and easily seen. And spectacular! Ouite a number are migratory, often from very far off places, like Siberia and Mongolia.

Just imagine, we could turn our lakes into field labs and display centres in keeping with the current environmental concern, and the college and school curriculum. Much of these lakes could then be used to showcase not only the problems, but the way these problems could be tackled too. And all this would not cost a thing!

We could be doing this right across India, for the simple reason that it is easier to appreciate cause-effect relationships in wetland systems than it is with say forest based ecology. Not that we have without stating it, used the natural system as a field museum and display centre. Take Delhi, they have the advantage of the Yamuna and the riverain system. But they also have Delhi zoo which attracts wild birds to its water bodies. Take Mysore. A good population of migratory birds, even for a city positioned so far south (North India gets more migratory birds). Calcutta, with its river delta network. And Hyderabad, with its large lakes. There are opportunities, we only need to recognise these at the right time.

Saving urban lakes has become imperative with pressures on urban land increasing every day. The extent of waterbodies in Bangalore has dropped from 4.8 percent of the land area less than a decade ago to some 2.8 percent today, which the work of Centre for Ecological Sciences at IISc has clearly shown. Yes, alarming. But a hard reality. More so if we consider that forty percent of Bangalore’s birdlife is supported by such a small extent of wetlands and waterbodies! And it is the same with every other Indian City.

Most of India’s cities have an oppurtunity to showcase our wildlife in the same places where we plan, attempt or treat and recycle our waste water. The National Lakes Conservation Plan launced as a Central Government initiative, has even put birds as a criteria in its evaluation guidelines

If we used many of our waterbodies for multiple uses, rather than just keeping it for one purpose, then we could always have the ducks, the sandpipers, and the pelicans swishing over our heads. And you could be holding somebody else’s hand, and be showing them the birds tomorrow!