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Birds galore in Kolleru

G.V. Ramana Rao

Great White Pelican joins list of birds at the cleaned-up lake

— PHOTO: CH. VIJAYA BHASKAR

NEW VISITORS: Pelicans at the Kolleru Lake.

VIJAYAWADA: The number of birds hovering and nesting around Andhra Pradesh’s Kolleru Lake, a Ramsar site, has increased manifold. And, the Great White Pelican, not usually seen in southern India, has joined the list of waterfowl that have made the waterbody their feeding ground. The Great White Pelican roost in the Great Rann of Kutch and fly to different wetlands in North India as a winter visitor.

The waterfowl population here that had hit a low of 1,056 in 2005, crossed 75,000 this year.

The lake has been at the centre of a controversy since the Government in Andhra Pradesh, under directions from a committee constituted by the Supreme Court, destroyed thousands of aquaculture tanks in ‘Operation Kolleru’ in 2006. The same government moved a resolution during a recent Assembly session, which was unanimously adopted, seeking to reduce the area of the Kolleru Wildlife Sanctuary by nearly 40,000 ha. This was a bid to upstage political rivals who were promising to do the same if voted to power. The resolution proposed a reduction in the size of the lake from contour +5 to contour +3, unmindful of the fact that the lake is protected under the Ramsar Convention right up to contour +10.

According to the annual Asian Waterfowl Census, the avian population of Kolleru was 26,062 in 1996. With the advent of illegal aquaculture, the numbers plummeted. From 23,979 in 2002, the waterfowl population dropped to 9,977 in 2003. It slipped to 2,410 the next year and to an all-time low of 1,056 in 2005.

No census was conducted in 2006, when the government banned aquaculture and destroyed fish tanks, in order to form channels for the quick passage of flood waters.

Assistant Conservator of Forest P. Gracious says the water fowl population has increased to 63,452 in 2007, just a year after Operation Kolleru. The Grey Pelicans, for which the lake was once a major breeding ground, re-appeared after nearly three decades. In the 2008 census conducted in the last week of January in line with the usual practice, the population of waterfowl in the lake was found to have increased to 75,383 with flamingos also visiting.

Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forest A.V. Joseph said that recently about 50 Great White Pelicans where sighted and photographed in Prathikollalanka on the West Godavari side of the lake.

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