• Koonthankulam Bird Sanctuary, spread over 129.33 ha, became a Ramsar site in 2021.
  • This year, to celebrate India’s 75th year of Independence, 11 more wetlands (four of them in Tamil Nadu) were added to the list of Ramsar sites to take the tally to 75.
  • Most of the Ramsar sites are in no better condition than before, when they didn’t possess the tag.
  • In India, wetlands continue to be viewed in isolation, without a proper plan or regulatory framework in place to conserve them.
  • The supervision of several Ramsar sites in India leaves much to be desired—boundaries have not been delineated on the ground, systems to monitor ecological character and management effectiveness are ad hoc, and financing is made on a project-to-project basis.
  • In case of Koonthankulam, what is needed is community-based conservation that accommodates the needs of the coexisting birds/animals and human communities. This holds true for most other Ramsar sites.