AHMEDABAD: A film city, an 18-hole golf course, and realty development with country homes are all coming up around the bird sanctuary of Nal Sarovar, located just 60 km from Ahmedabad. But, what if this large water body dries up or stops attracting migratory birds during winters?
Migratory flocks of cranes, storks, flamingos, pelicans, geese, herons, egrets, ducks, mallards, grebes, coots and other species of fishing birds and waterfowl are found at Nal Sarovar. It was for this reason that it was declared a national bird sanctuary in 1969. Nal Sarovar covers an area of 120 sq km in the dry season and up to 180 sq km after a good monsoon.
Apart from the real estate boom that has put its fragile ecosystem under stress, global warming and climate change have put a question mark on its survival. Check-dams upstream are another man-made disaster for this water-body.
“Whenever property dealers put up hoardings using brand ‘Nal Sarovar’ to market a property, the developer is leveraging on the hedonic value of the place. Nearer you go to this natural resource, higher the price. But property development around Nal Sarovar rests on the premise that the ecology and the water body will remain here,” says Member of Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and IIM-A professor, Priyadarshi Shukla.
The academician, who was part of the Nobel Prize-winning team of scientists, has done a detailed study of Nal Sarovar, which paints a bleak picture if conservation efforts are not initiated. With climatic changes, global warming, shrinking of seasons, shortening of winters and drying up of rivers in the years to come, for how long will the migratory birds continue to come here?
Shukla and other environmentalists are saying that if steps are taken at the earliest for its sustainable maintenance and development, Nal Sarovar can rake in tourism revenue and become a real estate hotspot.
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