Keoladeo National Park

The story of Keoladeo National Park

You’re standing in one of India’s best-known bird wetlands, a national park in Rajasthan that holds thousands of native, resident and migratory birds, especially in winter. At least 400 avian species have been noted here, and the park is internationally recognised as a World Heritage Site and a Ramsar site.

What makes this place striking is that it is not just a patch of wild marsh. The park contains a human-made regulated wetland, and that controlled water system is part of why it matters so much in a drier region. It also protects Bharatpur settlements from flash floods and provides pastures for local cattle and livestock, so the place has long been tied to both wildlife and everyday land use.

The park’s story begins as a hunting landscape. It was developed into a duck shooting reserve in 1899 by the administrator of the Bharatpur State, and other descriptions place its origins in the late 19th century as a hunting preserve of the Bharatpur rulers. Before that, the area had been used as a waterfowl hunting ground, and the local name Ghana refers to the dense natural mosaic of dry grasslands, woodlands, swamps and seasonal wetlands that make up the reserve. It covers 28.73 square kilometre.

A major change came through the efforts of ornithologist Salim Ali. The place became the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary in 1956, was declared a protected sanctuary in 1971, and then established as Keoladeo National Park on 10 March 1982. The name Keoladeo comes from the temple at the centre of the park dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, and Britannica links the park’s renaming to that ancient temple. Since then, its standing has only grown: it was designated a Ramsar site in October 1981 and made a World Heritage Site in 1985.

If you are looking for the key conservation idea behind the park, it is wintering birds. UNESCO describes it as a former duck-hunting reserve of the Maharajas and one of the major wintering areas for large numbers of aquatic birds from Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, China and Siberia. It also says 364 species of birds, including the rare Siberian crane, have been recorded here. The park’s own description says at least 400 avian species have been noted or observed, so this is a place where bird diversity is the main event.

The wetland itself has been carefully managed. One account notes that several earthen bunds divide the park into compartments or blocks, with sluice gates at certain points to regulate water level. Sahapedia adds that the area’s transformation was linked to the construction of the Ajan Bund, a temporary reservoir about one kilometre from the park, and to later flooding that began the human involvement in turning a natural depression into a permanent waterfowl reserve. That same description places the Keoladeo Temple at the centre, which gives the park its name.

The park’s conservation history includes a project between December 1992 and January 1995 involving the Governments of India and Russia, the International Crane Foundation and the Wild Bird Society of Japan. That project aimed to save the Siberian crane by releasing captivity-bred cranes into the wild, tracking migratory routes of common cranes, and building up the resident crane population. It did not achieve the desired outcome, but introduced cranes survived here.

If you want to notice the park as you stand here, look for the wetland compartments and remember that this is a managed landscape as much as a natural one. It is also part of Bharatpur division, and the fact that it remains both a wildlife sanctuary and a working flood-and-water system is the essential thing to understand about it.