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The Basai wetlands in Gurugram has shrunk to a quarter of its original size over the years.
About Basai Wetlands
- Basai wetland, located in Basai village in Gurgaon tehsil in Gurgaon district in Haryana.
- Home to 300-plus species of rare, common and migratory birds, Basai is recognised as a key biodiversity area by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Wildlife Institute of India and the BirdLife International, a global network of NGOs that work to protect bird habitats.
Credit: TH - An upcoming expressway, cutting through the terrain here, has majorly impacted the flyway of thousands of migratory birds from Europe and Central Asia.
- Till a decade ago, the Basai wetlands was a top birdwatching destination where the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) had documented 281 species of avian population.
- Basai wetland lies in one of the paleochannel of the Sahibi River, a tributary of Yamuna which originates from the Aravalli range in Rajasthan and flows through west and South Haryana into Delhi where it is also known as the Najafgarh drain.
- The wetland is permanent shallow wetland.
- Basai Wetland meets three Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBA) criteria: containing populations of threatened species (Criterion A1), supporting more than 1% of biogeographical population of a species (Criterion A4i), and supporting populations of more than 20,000 waterbirds (Criterion A4iii).
- Among the mammals, Nilgai, Golden jackal, Jungle cat, and Indian grey mongoose are known to occur.
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