Loktak lake is situated approximately 38 km south of Imphal (the capital of Manipur) in the Bishnupur district of Manipur. It acts as a natural reservoir for the rivers and streams of the valley and hills in the state. Loktak is the largest freshwater inland natural reservoir in the eastern region of the country and has been identified as a major Indian wetland by the World Conservation Union (IUCN). The rich wildlife/biodiversity of this area had earned it the status of a Ramsar site of international importance in 1990.

All villages in the lake periphery are connected by road to Imphal via Bishnupur Bazar and Moirang on the western side of the lake, and via Mayang Imphal and Sekmaijin on the eastern side of the lake. The rainfall varies between 600 mm and 1600 mm (with an average of 1400 mm). The lake is dotted with several small islands,the prominent ones being the Thanga and Karang islands, both inhabited. The 28896 ha Loktak lake area is actually not a single body but a composite of several separate wetlands, locally known as ‘pats’.

Besides the massive occurrence of phumdi, there is also a large growth of aquatic plants like ishing charang, kabo-kang (water hyacinth) and kabo-napi. In addition, there is now an extensive growth of choura, which is an introduced grass species originally brought in from outside the state as fodder for cattle and now found colonizing the phumdi. Choura has practically dominated other species occurring on the phumdi.

There are approximately 55 suburban and rural settlements within and around Loktak Lake. The predominant community is meitei (both Vaishnavite Hindus and orthodox meiteis) with a sparse population of meitei Christians and meitei Pangal (Manipuri Muslims) living in separate pockets around the lake. There is also a small population of kabui (rongmei tribe) in Toubul village near Bishnupur district headquarters on the western side of the lake.

It is estimated that around 30,000 people depend on fishing for their livelihood in the lake area. The number of hutments constructed on the phumdis is estimated to be more than 1000, with a rough population of about 4000 individuals. The total human population in Bishnupur district according to the 1991 census is 1,80,773 with a density of 364 persons per sq km. 

The primary sources of income of the local people have been traditional agriculture and traditional fishery phum-namba. Income is also derived from sale of locally produced vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower, potato, brinjal, ladyfinger, parkia (tree bean), and dry and fermented fish, fermented bamboo shoots, edible plants and roots from Loktak lake, water-reed mats, etc. More recent forms of income are modern fishery practices, large-scale farming with modern equipment and technology, small-scale businesses, transport businesses with cycle-rickshaws, auto-rickshaws, jeep taxis, minibuses, shops, restaurants, and employment with the government at different levels.

The conservation efforts by the local communities are spread over different localities of Loktak lake surface area. Legally most of the area under community conservation falls under the jurisdiction of the Revenue Department of Manipur, which includes settlements, agricultural lands and fish farms in the lake periphery. The areas where community conservation is active are:

• The Birahari Pat Migratory waterfowl habitat (approximately 400 ha waterbody). This area is located around 2-3 km offshore from the Khoijuman village on the western side of lake. The single largest population of waterfowl seen here is the Uren porom (Common Coot);

• Keibul Lamjao National Park (KLNP) (4050 ha on the southern end of lake);

• Lake shoreline fish farms (Migratory waterfowl habitat, approx. 4-5 hectare area, covering around 4 to 6 km area in length) and adjacent waterbody in Nongmaikhong and Khordak village areas (on the south-eastern side of lake and also south-east of KLNP).

The Loktak lake is associated with folk legends and cultural beliefs of the Manipuri people. The religious temperament of the people finds expression in the different religious worships and folk art performances, such as the projection of the Loktak Lake as the ‘mirror of Manipuri civilization‘.

When the national park came into force in 1977, there was strong opposition from the local people when they were not allowed to enter the Park area and continue with their traditional practice of collecting food and fodder plants. The tendency is still there in the sense that though there has been some amount of understanding between PA managers and local people, the people here, particularly the women, feel a certain resentment at the manner in which they are stopped from continuing with their traditional practice, even while the forest department does not have any management policy to regulate entry or allow people to enter up to a certain point in the Park.

The alarming results of the LHEP led to the initial stirrings of the need for conservation among some locals and environmental groups in the mid-1980s. They (mainly the meiteis) realized and decided to react to the undesired developments in the lake, which were detrimental to the health of humans, wildlife and the lake ecosystem.

In the years following the commissioning of the Ithai barrage of LHEP, the local people living in the lake area rose in agitation against the adverse impacts of the barrage, such as the artificial flooding of their settlement lands and loss of their paddy fields. This mass movement ultimately forced the Manipur government to set up the Loktak Development Authority (LDA) to address some of the problems. However, the government neither had a concrete plan for conservation of the lake ecosystem nor for the wildlife.

The vacuum created by the lack of a government policy on conservation of the wildlife was felt by the local people living in the immediate vicinity of the KLNP, where there were several cases of poaching and unnatural deaths of wildlife such as by drowning. This provided the impetus to the local people to do something positive for the deteriorating conditions of the lake and the wildlife.

Around 1991, some of the concerned individuals and non-governmental organisations met and decided to form a collective body for the cause of the lake and the wildlife dependent on the lake. They formed an association called Environmental Social Reformation and Sangai Protection Forum—known as ESRSPF, or sometimes simply as the Sangai Forum or just as the Forum—with an initial membership of around 30 local youth clubs and voluntary organizations based in the KLNP and Loktak lake areas.

The issue of protection and conservation of the much-revered sangai and the other wildlife living in KLNP including the migratory waterfowl, and the health of the lake, which is the source of life and reverence for the people, were the thrust of the campaign. The initiative progressed slowly yet steadily. It gradually picked up from a few individuals’ concern to a mass movement all along the lake shoreline by the mid-1990s.

Grassroots-level public meetings, nature camps, workshops, etc. were organized by ESRSPF to spread the message of the need to conserve the Loktak lake biodiversity. The locals received help from Imphal-based environmental organisations, like the Manipur Association for Science and Society (MASS), and experts from the Manipur University, Dhanamanjuri College of Science and others. Efforts to highlight the plight of Loktak lake were made through various means like loud protests, writings in newspapers and magazines, projection in films and video, ballads, lectures, etc. at local, regional, national and international levels.

An annual ‘Loktak Day’ celebration is organised each year in October in places like Thanga, Komlakhong and Nongmaikhong to highlight the conditions of the lake and the need to conserve it. As a part of the celebration, meetings, seminars and cultural programmes are organised. Although organised at the people’s level, this celebration has a political overtone in the sense that potential politicians based in the Loktak lake area take the leading part in the celebrations.

Important conservation sites were identified by the locals themselves and with support from the ESRSPF; these were subsequently decreed as ‘protected areas’ by a consensus of the local communities. Local youth clubs and voluntary organisations together decided to monitor the areas for possible violations, such as poaching, unauthorised entry into the national park, setting fire to dry vegetation, etc. ESRSPF also set up units in critical spots like Keibul Lamjao, Nongmaikhong, Thanga and Bishnupur. Since then, the entire locality, including youth, men and women, involve themselves in the conservation of the specified areas.

In this way, several of the villages located around the southern parts of the lake joined in a common effort to protect and conserve the KLNP and other adjoining areas that are important wildlife habitats. Likewise, villages like Khoijuman located in the upper portion of the lake, and Nongmaikhong-Khordak in the south-eastern part of the lake took up efforts to conserve the migratory waterfowl habitat in the Birahari Pat. Most of the conservation occurs on privately owned lands or water body area, not necessarily controlled by government agencies.

Local voluntary organisations under the banner of ESRSPF feel responsible for protection, conservation and preservation of the Loktak Lake and its biodiversity. Government agencies like the forest department and the Loktak Development Authority are much indebted to the services of the ESRSPF volunteers in the protection and conservation of the wildlife and their habitats in KLNP and surrounding areas.

In fact, where the forest department had failed to mobilise the locals for effectively controlling poaching in KLNP, it has been due to the untiring efforts of the ESRSPF volunteers that poaching in KLNP and in other parts of Loktak Lake has been greatly reduced in recent years.

On 19 January 2003, ESRSPF volunteers nabbed two poachers who had hunted sangai deer inside KLNP. They were apprehended with around 4 kg of chopped deer meat, which the poachers obviously intended to sell clandestinely. Both the poachers are from the Keibul Lamjao village. Both of them were later handed over to the Moirang police station and a criminal case was registered against them. Such activities serve to discourage potential hunters. 

The conservation effort finds some amount of opposition from some of the primary stakeholders, such as the local women who gather edible roots, plants and fodder grass from within the KLNP, and fishermen whose fishing activities are restricted in those areas where the initiative is quite active, like in the Birahari Pat area.

Although the status of a national park restricts locals from freely entering the core zone area of KLNP, due to absence of proper demarcation of core, manipulation and buffer zones, some sort of compromise has been made with the locals who traditionally collect plants for food and fodder from the KLNP, and certain concessions are granted to the local people to enter and collect dry vegetation and edible plants and roots from within the enclosure of the Park and in the surrounding areas.

DEALING WITH VIOLATIONS

There are also instances of conflict from adjacent communities who continue poaching/hunting avifauna and waterfowl. In some of the poaching cases, it was found that some of the poachers belonged to a different community from nearby Kwakta village, which is located about 4 km west of Moirang town. Poaching is carried out in connivance with a few local persons living in the KLNP area (e.g., the two poachers recently caught are both from the KLNP area). Poachers are known to hunt the birds (and animals) and sell them to vendors in places like Kwakta, Moirang Lamkhai and Imphal to supply restaurants, hotels, etc.

In the case of a poacher being caught red-handed by the locals in the KLNP area, he is immediately handed over to the range officer of the Keibul Lamjao Forest Office. Then a meeting of the locals from the village (Keibul Lamjao, and sometimes attended by villagers from neighbouring Chingmei village), including the gram panchayat members, ESRSPF, forest officers and other important persons in the village is held to discuss the situation. Normally the meeting is organised at the Forest Range Office in Keibul Lamjao immediately an offence takes place. In most instances, the cases are settled at the grassroots level itself without the intervention of the police or the district magistrate. The collective meeting of these representatives decides on the nature of the penalty to be awarded to the poachers.

The nature of penalty differs according to the extent of offence committed. The poacher is either given a good thrashing and let off after a stern warning not to repeat his crime again, or the poacher is made to pay a fine of Rs 10,000 (this amount was announced by the ESRSPF as penalty to any person caught hunting sangai). In some cases, depending on the seriousness of the crime, the poachers are handed over to the police for legal proceedings (but the locals are wary of such legal proceedings because they feel nothing comes out of it).

The open waterbody provides a habitat to migratory water birds in winter months, starting from October up to March-April. An area of around 5200 ha in the southern part of Loktak lake, inclusive of the Keibul Lamjao portion, was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1954, but the area was later reduced to around 4050 ha and was declared a national park, called Keibul Lamjao National Park (KLNP), in 1977 under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, and the Manipur Wild Life (Protection) Rules, 1974.

Where the Government had failed to establish rapport and a meaningful control and management of the Park, the community was successful in bringing about a semblance of law and order in the protected area. There have been several occasions when the ESRSPF launched a local-level agitation against the forest department to protest against the inactiveness of the Department towards the conservation of the sangai habitat, or to protest Loktak Development Authority’s undesired engineering activity in the lake. However, Forest department officials do get support from ESRSPF and other organisations during sangai census, control of poaching, etc.

There have been no direct benefits to the local communities as a result of their initiatives, except for the small financial assistance from LDA for public motivation campaigns and community welfare programmes like raising fish hatcheries, social forestry, community toilets, welfare schemes for women, etc. The only benefit gained is the sense of pride in achieving some degree of success in conserving the wildlife habitat and population, even though it is in the initial stages.

The initiative has been successful in achieving a more concerted effort towards preventing poaching of sangai and other wildlife in the KLNP area. Over the last five years an increase has been noticed in the numbers of migratory waterfowl coming to the area, and the population of wild boar in the KLNP has also increased.

After the commissioning of the Ithai barrage on the Manipur River in 1979, as a part of the National Loktak Multipurpose Project (officially commissioned in 1983), an artificial reservoir was created. This resulted in permanent rise in the water level of this wetland, coupled with a vast water spread throughout the year. The natural flow of water to and from the wetland was severely altered by the creation of the barrage, affecting the hydrologic cycle of this delicately balanced system.

The barrage constructed to create the artificial water reservoir for the Loktak Hydroelectric Project (LHEP) maintained a constant water level at 768.5 mamsl (in peak season during the monsoon, the water level is maintained at 769 mamsl). This level of water surface has resulted in huge tracts of settlement and agricultural lands getting either submerged under water permanently or inundated at regular intervals through the year whenever there is continuous heavy rainfall (3-5 days). The effects of this on the local wildlife and people include:

1. Fish farms in the lake periphery owned by local farmers are constantly affected by flash floods or sudden rise of lake water level during periods of heavy rains, often resulting in heavy loss of fish.

2. The KLNP in the southern part of the lake has suffered extensively as a result of raised water level. The entire Park area is subjected to frequent and regular flash floods, especially in the monsoon months.

3. Back-flow effect of the Khuga River through the Ungamel channel towards the south of KLNP has had adverse impact on the national park. Sudden water rise in the river after continuous rainfall for up to 4-5 days hits the southern portion of KLNP with great force, and as a result the floating biomass is ripped apart and the loose vegetation drifts off. This not only reduces the vegetation cover in KLNP but also endangers the wildlife inhabiting in the Park. Occasionally, it has been reported that wildlife like wild boar, hog deer and sangai were found to have strayed out of the Park area on this drifting biomass and into human habitations, sometimes causing injury to humans. Poachers take advantage of such situations to capture the wildlife.

4. A sharp increase in the number of fish culture ponds that has led to a profusion of vegetation mass, depleting the areas which were earlier clear water zones. Clear water zones are essential for the local people to meet basic water needs such as drinking, washing, bathing, sanitation, etc.

5. On construction of the barrage, those people who earlier eked out a living through tilling the soil started fishing, thus putting pressure on the already depleting aquatic resources.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/environment/guardians-of-the-lairembee-loktak-lake-in-manipur-is-a-ramsar-site-in-danger-of-decline/article65870424.ece

https://www.eastmojo.com/manipur/2022/08/10/manipur-announces-loktak-lake-clean-up-locals-fear-loss-of-fishing-commons/

https://thewire.in/government/manipur-loktak-lake-floating-homestay