New Delhi: India has added Tso Kar Wetland Complex in Changthang region of Ladakh as its 42nd Ramsar site, which is a second one in the Union Territory (UT) of Ladakh, the Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Prakash Javadekar, disclosed here today .
The aim of the Ramsar list is “to develop and maintain an international network of wetlands which are important for the conservation of global biological diversity and for sustaining human life through the maintenance of their ecosystem components, processes and benefits.
The inclusion of the wetland in Ramsar List provides it recognition as wetland of international importance.
The Tso Kar Basin is a high-altitude wetland complex, which is a notable example of two connected lakes, the freshwater Startsapuk Tso and the hypersaline Tso Kar. Of these two principal waterbodies, Startsapuk Tso is a freshwater lake of about 438 hectares to the south, while Tso Kar is a hypersaline lake of 1800 hectares to the north, situated in the Changthang region of Ladakh. It is called Tso Kar, meaning white lake, because of the white salt efflorescence found on the margins due to the evaporation of highly saline water.
The Tso Kar Basin is an A1 Category Important Bird Area (IBA) as per Bird Life International and a key staging site in the Central Asian Flyway. The site is also one of the most important breeding areas of the Black-necked Crane (Grus nigricollis) in India. This IBA is also the major breeding area for Great Crested Grebe (Podicepscristatus), Bar-headed Geese (Anserindicus), Ruddy Shelduck (Tadornaferruginea), Brown-headed Gull (Larusbrunnicephalus), Lesser Sand-Plover (Charadriusmongolus) and many other species.
It may be pointed out that wetlands provide a wide range of important resources and ecosystem services such as food, water, fibre, groundwater recharge, water purification, flood moderation, erosion control and climate regulation. They are, in fact a major source of water and our main supply of freshwater comes from an array of wetlands which help soak rainfall and recharge groundwater.
– global bihari bureau
