KARACHI, April 11: As the weather has been getting hotter in the first week of April, the back-migration of the waterfowl is nearing completion at the Haleji Lake, one of the most important lakes in the country providing shelter to the flying winter visitors. Sources said that though the number of the migratory waterfowl that visited the lake – once known as the Bird Watchers’ Paradise -– this year was just a friction of the birds that used to visit this water body in the early 1990s, it had more than doubled the last year’s count.
According to the mid-winter waterfowl count carried out by the Sindh Wildlife Department, this year nearly 5,387 migratory waterfowl visited the Haleji Lake against last year’s of 2,518. The lake during its peak days in 1992, according to the SWD count, had played host to 168,645 waterfowl.
The colonial rulers during the first half of the 20th century had built embankments around a depression and created the Haleji Lake to store water for the troops stationed in Karachi during the Second World War. Later, the lake served as a permanent water source for the city.
It was located on one of the major migratory routes of the waterfowl -– the Indus Flyway – the Haleji Lake was declared a wildlife sanctuary and later it was declared a Ramsar Site – the highest international status that a water body could get from the conservation point of view.
As the Haleji wetland attracted the attention of international agencies responsible for wetland management such as the United Kingdom-based IWRB (International Waterfowl and Wetland Research Bureau), the Thailand-based Asian Wetland Bureau (AWB), Pakistan rose for the first time on the world map of the World Heritage Site, and thereafter hundreds of foreign visitors had been repeatedly visiting this wetland.
The sources said the lake faced devastation when a commercial fishing contract was given out, which was later cancelled after protest by conservationists. In the meantime, however, the contractor had caught almost all the fish stock.
Later, a new canal was built to provided Indus water to the city directly from the river, owing to which the lake’s importance declined in the government’s eyes and its water supply was disrupted, and not only the lake shrunk in size but its water quality was also affected.
They said that in addition to the exotic species of fish, the China carp had also come into being in the lake, situated some 80km from Karachi off the National Highway. This fish not only eats up the vegetation but also eats other fish, hence the lake’s attraction to the migratory waterfowl declined as the winter visitors could find less food.
The sources said that after the hue and cry was raised by the conservationists and environmentalists, water supply to the lake was restored which might have attracted the larger number of the birds this year.
