Important bird sanctuaries

Story hook

Every November, an extraordinary aerial migration unfolds across the Indian subcontinent. Bar-headed geese, the highest-flying birds on Earth, cross the Himalayas at 9,000 m — higher than commercial airliners — to escape the Siberian winter. Demoiselle cranes follow ancient routes over Afghanistan. Siberian cranes, once the crown jewel of Keoladeo Ghana National Park in Bharatpur, used to fly 6,500 km from Russia's tundra to a single, sacred wetland in Rajasthan.

The Siberian cranes stopped coming. The last documented arrival at Keoladeo was in 2002 — just two birds. Today, fewer than 4,000 Siberian cranes survive globally, almost all wintering in China's Poyang Lake. The crash followed Afghan civil war hunting along the migration corridor, water shortages at Bharatpur, and the loss of intermediate wetland stopovers. A single broken link can erase a species from a region.

This file walks through the nine bird sanctuaries you must know — from Keoladeo (India's first UNESCO World Heritage Site for wetlands) to Vedanthangal (the world's oldest officially protected bird sanctuary, established 1798), and Chilika (Asia's largest brackish lagoon hosting 1 million birds in winter).

Why this matters for UPSC

Bird sanctuaries appear in 1-2 Prelims MCQs every year — match-pairs on state, river, key species, Ramsar status. Mains can ask analytical questions on wetland conservation, migration corridors, and the impact of chemical pollution (DDT, diclofenac). Interview boards probe bird-watching hobbies and species diplomacy (Siberian crane, Amur falcon).