AP PHOTOS: Wildlife officials feed birds in frozen Kashmir
By DAR YASIN
SRINAGAR, India (AP) – Wildlife officer Ghulam Mohiuddin Dar and his colleagues break the ice in an icy wetland, paddle their boats and scatter grain to feed migratory birds in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Officials are feeding the birds to prevent their famine as weather conditions in the Himalayan region deteriorate, with two heavy snowfalls since December. Temperatures have dropped to minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit).
The vast rice fields and apple orchards are covered in snow. A lot of wetlands and lakes, including parts of the famous Dal Lake, have been frozen.
The chess and cries of hundreds of thousands of birds visiting Kashmir during their winter migration have long been a welcome noise for the people of the region. They come from Eastern Europe, Japan and Turkey to feed and breed in the wetlands between the mountain peaks and plateaus of the region.
“They are our guests,” Dar said on a cold day as he dropped the grain at the bird feeding points in the Hokersar wetland.
Officials say at least 700,000 birds have flocked to Kashmir in the past two months and expect them to arrive more as temperatures improve in February.
In recent decades, the number of visiting birds has decreased, which experts say is due to a combination of climate change and urban development. They say that the construction around the wetlands, the accumulated garbage and the climate change of the Himalayas rob the birds of their traditional troughs and nesting areas.
According to a recent study by the University of Kashmir, the Hokersar Wetland went from nearly 19 square kilometers (7 square miles) in 1969 to the current 12.8 square kilometers (5 square miles).
But Kashimir’s tense security situation has made it more difficult to address environmental problems in the famous Kashmir Valley: a vast collection of wetlands and connected waterways, known both for idyllic views and meadows full of flowers and for its decades-long battle against the Indian government. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have died in the conflict since 1989.
The mountainous region of Kashmir, a part controlled by neighboring Pakistan, is traversed by hundreds of miles of barbed wire and patrolled by hundreds of thousands of Indian troops. Both India and Pakistan are claimed in full.
Environmentalists are urging residents to offer food to birds in icy conditions.
“It is not only our official duty to feed them, but also a directive from God,” Dar said.