The Story of Harike: A Wetland that has Witnessed History

On a chilly December evening, I am standing on Harike Barrage, an ordinary-looking bridge on the Ferozepur border in Punjab. The barrage doubles as a dam. On our left lies the vast, bounteous Harike Wildlife Sanctuary, a protected wetland where two of Punjab’s largest rivers — the Beas and the Sutlej — meet. Along its edges, cheerful ducks wag their tails and bob. At a distance, over serene waters, thousands of migratory and resident birds feed and frolic. The landscape on my left, however, is starkly different. Dammed by the barrage, the Sutlej River suddenly diminishes, in parts shrinking to a trickle. It trundles along powerlines, swallowing fetid sewage, flowing with a defeated momentum until another dam shackles it. A few kilometres ahead, it crosses the border into Pakistan. Karm Singh, our local bird guide, points towards it and says, “If you drive along the river for two hours, you’ll reach Lahore”.

A wizened man with a silver beard, and warm smile, Singh knows the landscape like the back of his hand. During the Partition, Singh’s family lived on the banks of the Sutlej in Lahore and followed the river across the border to reach Harike. “They only knew how to live along a river. Harike was a natural choice,” he says. In those days, Harike, locally known as Hari-ke-pattan, was a village and ferrying point (pattan) for locals crossing the river. Today, the jetty lies submerged under the wetland’s waters.  

Punjab and its Rivers 

Punjab state and its rivers share a tumultuous relationship. The state is named after five rivers (Jhelum, Chenab, Sutlej, Beas, and Ravi), all tributaries of the King — the River Indus. “Punj” means five, and “ab” means water. The rivers, romanticised in love legends, poetry, and Sikh holy hymns called Gurbani, are at the heart of its identity. However, they are also its most prized and plundered resource. About two centuries ago, the British dammed the rivers to fuel an aggressive agrarian economy that turned Punjab’s arid lands into agricultural fields — a landscape now synonymous with the state. However, it hampered the rivers’ ecology, drying out deltas, and cutting off routes that dolphins, crocodiles, otters, and fish routinely took, altering their natural course forever. And then, the Partition dealt another blow.

All five rivers originate in the Himalayas and cross borders to flow into Pakistan. The newly-split nations had to divide waters that flowed freely. To placate simmering cross-border tensions, rights over waters were reassigned through negotiations. Today, India retains rights over the waters of the Sutlej, Ravi, and Beas, while Pakistan controls the Chenab and Jhelum. After the Partition, all the rivers have been strategically dammed to benefit the assigned country. Some of Punjab’s largest wetlands (now declared Ramsar sites), including Ropar, Nangal, and Harike, are man-made reservoirs formed by the dams.  

Birth of a Wetland

Constructed in 1952, the Harike Barrage dammed the Sutlej, redirecting its waters through a canal to provide water to over 7,500 villages in Rajasthan. However, in Hari-ke-pattan, the blocked waters from the reservoir spilled into the surrounding areas, submerging at least three districts and giving birth to one of North India’s largest wetlands (spanning 41 sq km). Ironically, the wetland created by the dam is also one of the most biodiverse habitats in the state.

Punjab falls on the Central Asian Flyway — one of the nine routes migratory birds take to move between their northern Asian breeding grounds and non-breeding or wintering sites in West and South Asia and the Indian Ocean. Every year, around October, when habitats in Siberia and Central Asia freeze over, tens of thousands of migratory birds take the flyway to reach sites in warmer, temperate zones. Harike, one of the largest stopovers en route, hosts migratory birds of 90 species.

In search of recognition

However, despite the rich wildlife, the wetland’s biodiversity remained ignored for over three decades. “In its initial decades of existence, Harike was managed by Punjab’s irrigation department, and despite its abundant wildlife, the reservoir primarily served the agricultural needs of Punjab and Rajasthan”, says Gitanjali Kanwar, a senior coordinator at WWF-India with over 15 years of experience of working in this landscape. In the 1980s, after Salim Ali, the legendary ornithologist, conducted a bird-ringing project at the site, it attracted attention. Harike was first declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1982 and a Ramsar site, a wetland of international importance, in 1990. However, growing unrest and rioting in Punjab in the 1980s, sparked by the secessionist movement, hampered the conservation work.

In 1993, amidst tensions and violence, a Swiss engineer and birdwatcher, Per Undeland, stumbled upon the sanctuary. Over four years, along with the BNHS and the forest department, he documented species, at least three never seen before in Punjab, and put Harike back on the birders’ map. In 1999, the sanctuary’s boundaries were extended to 86 sq km and notified to include parts of the riverine ecosystem and surrounding forests. 

Rich ecosystem

Slowly, Harike’s fate turned. Though most popular for its winter bird visitors, today, Harike supports 350-odd species of resident and migratory birds, including forest birds that live along the wetland’s peripheries. It also hosts mammals such as the smooth-coated otter, hog deer, and seven species of rare freshwater turtles. In 2007, the endangered Indus river dolphin, largely seen in Pakistan’s rivers, was officially recorded for the first time after 77 years in the Beas. “While the dolphins must have existed there all along, our attention towards their conservation intensified following this ‘discovery’,” says Kanwar. In 2017, a conservation project by the Department of Forests and Wildlife Preservation, Punjab, and WWF-India, reintroduced gharials thirty years after they went missing from this habitat.

The next day, at dawn, we take a motorboat through the wetland to spot these stars. As we ride swiftly, cutting through the morning mist, I realise that the landscape belies Harike’s complex history. The waters are slow-moving, serene, and unending. As the mist wanes, the rising ripples sparkle under a red sun as if the water is on fire. Soon, thousands of birds surround us, creating a racket. In that moment, everything in Harike seems abundant.

“Harike is unique for many reasons,” says Kanwar. “For one, it is a large mosaic of diverse habitats that provide birds, especially waterfowl, ample space to rest and forage — there are marshes, reeds, sand islands, still waterbodies, and slow-moving river creeks. Second, both the Sutlej and Beas bring with them a diversity of fish that provide plenty of prey for birds. Several that arrive in October look frail and thin, but by March, when it is time to return, they’ve fattened up!” The census shows over 60,000 migrant birds arrived in 2022-2023.

As we ride through its waters, hundreds of Eurasian coots, black birds with white shields on their head, scamper off, but instead of flying away, they run on water in a panic until they get to a safer spot. “Darpok aa (They are scared),” says Singh. Eurasian spoonbills, with bills shaped like a black spatula, take flight, circling above us like drones surveying us to see what kind of threat we pose. Flocks of bar-headed geese honk at our approach. Despite our boat’s cackling and “phat-phat-phat”, a solitary and statuesque grey heron stands still like a wise old man.

Threats and Challenges 

We ride over sluggish waters for hours, spotting gregarious flocks against crisp blue skies studded with fresh, floating cotton candy clouds. Suddenly, Singh stops. “We are at the confluence,” he says, pointing at the waters. “This is the Sutlej.” I stick my hand into the dark, warm, and greasy water. We move 100 m ahead. “This is the Beas.” The water is unmistakably clear and cold. When the Sutlej travels through Ludhiana and other small towns, factories that manufacture paint, plants, and pesticides empty concentrated effluents into it, transforming the river. The affluents it carries to Harike pollute the wetland affecting its fish, the resident and migratory bird populations, and many other species. “During the pandemic, when the industries were shut, and the Sutlej had a short respite from the pollutants, a pod of dolphins swam through the Beas to the Sutlej, which forms a part of the wetland. It shows the potential the Sutlej and Harike hold,” says Kanwar.

On another late evening, we are searching for signs of the smooth-coated otter. A week earlier, Singh had spotted an entire family basking along a mudbank. As we scan the waters, we spot a rather curious sight. Large trees stick out of the shallow water in a neat row. A cacophonous colony of hundreds of little and great cormorants have taken over several trees, building shabby nests on forked branches. Their droppings stream down, painting the branches and water hyacinth below in chalky white. “That is the former treeline of the Maujgarh village that now lies submerged underwater,” says Singh. The hardy ficus trees, which must have lined a local road or sheltered village elders, stand as the last remaining witnesses of all the shifts and changes the landscape has seen.