Keoladeo National Park
India is privileged to have a national park that is acknowledged as one of the world’s most important bird breeding and feeding grounds. This is the Keoladeo National Park, formerly known as the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary, where hundreds of exotic migratory birds from faraway Siberia, Central Asia, and Africa arrive to spend the winter.
The park, spanning an area of 29 sq km in the Bharatpur district of Rajasthan, about 55 km west of Agra and 175 km southwest of Delhi, occupies a strategic location in the middle of the Central Asian migratory flyway and also has abundant water. These two factors have caused it to become an internationally important region where birds migrating down the Central Asian flyway congregate before dispersing to other regions.
This park is the only known wintering site of the central population of the critically endangered Siberian crane. It also serves as a wintering area for other globally threatened species such as the greaterspotted eagle and imperial eagle.
Originally a private hunting ground of the Maharaja of Bharatpur, the site was notified as a bird sanctuary in 1956. In 1982, it was elevated to the status of a national park and renamed after the Keoladeo temple, an ancient temple dedicated to Lord Shiva that stands at the centre of the site. The same year, it was designated as a Ramsar site(wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention).
In 1985, the Keoladeo NationalPark was listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Today, it not only is a haven for birdwatchers and nature enthusiasts, but also serves as an important research and conservation centre for ornithologists and ecologists. The park has an interesting history. The area where it stands was originally a natural depression that was inundated when Maharaja Suraj Mal, the ruler of the then princely state of Bharatpur, constructed a bund at the confluence of the Gambhir and Banganga rivers between 1726 and 1763 to prevent floods in his capital. This resulted in the development of an area comprising lakes and ponds, woodlands, wetlands and marshes with a lot of aquatic vegetation that attracted numerous migratory birds.
It was subsequently designated as the ruler’s private duck-hunting reserve for the use of the royal family and their colonial visitors, and was later formally inaugurated in 1901 by Lord Curzon, the then Viceroy of India. As per an inscription found on a pillar near the temple, the then Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, set a record on November 12, 1938 by shooting 4,273 birds here in a single day.
Even after the site was turned over to the Forestry department, the Maharaja continued to retain shooting rights until 1972, when the Wildlife (Protection) Act was passed, prohibiting hunting.
With a wide diversity of habitats ranging from marshes, woodlands, scrublands, and grasslands to denuded saline patches, the park supports an amazing variety of plant and animal species. One third of the habitat is wetland with varying types of micro habitats having trees, mounds, dykes, and open water with or without submerged or emergent plants. The remaining terrain consists of tropical dry deciduous forest, scrub woodland, and dry grassland. More than 370 species of birds have been recorded in the park, the most common being the gadwall, shoveler, spotbill, common teal, lesser whistling duck, tufted duck, comb duck, cotton pygmy-goose, great cormorant, little cormorant, Indian shag, ruff, painted stork, white spoonbill, Asian open billed stork, black-headed ibis, oriental darter, common sandpiper, wood sandpiper and green sandpiper.
Apart from the birds for which itis renowned, the Keoladeo National Park is also home to about 30 species of mammals, including the chital, sambar, nilgai, blackbuck, rhesus macaque, wild boar, Bengal fox, jackal, striped hyena, common palm civet, small Indian civet, crested porcupine, and Indian hare; 13 species of snakes including the python, cobra, krait and Russell’s viper; 5 lizards; 7turtles; and 7 amphibians.
