Page 94 - Sonbeel Utsab 2024

phase of initiation of farming process of the year. Data suggests that if there is decline
in production by 30 percent the total annual loss could be about Rs. 1000 crore.

Issues affecting Son Beel
For hundreds of years now, the lifestyle of these fishermen has been shaped
by the lifecycle of the wetland – brimming with water during the rainy seasons and
drying up during winter. They practiced fishing when the wetland had water and
cultivated buro, the local paddy, when water was scarce. The fishermen belong to the
Kaibarta community who migrated to Assam's Barak Valley from Bangladesh after
the Partition, settling in villages on the banks of Son Beel. There are over 30,000
Kaibarta families solely dependent on the wetland for their livelihood. Most of them
are masterful boatmen and fishermen, who started engaging in agriculture only later.
But a shortage of rainfall for over four years, has minimised the wetland's water
supply. Rotish recounts how at one time water would overflow the paddy fields
during the harvest season. Now, rains are delayed by two months, he says. “Owing to
the change in rain patterns, the water equirement for the aquatic and terrestrial
ecosystems for which wetlands act as a medium, is not met. This leads to them
slipping away,” explains

Jayaditya Purkayastha, a leading herpetologist based in Guwahati, Assam. A 2012
study showed a reduction of 31.58 percent of the total annual rainfall between 2004
and 2008 in the Barak Valley region. As climate change and anthropogenic activities
threaten the wetland, fish productivity remains a distant memory for the fisher folk.
The upstream migration of Hilsa from the downstream rivers of Bangladesh, has
stopped altogether. The effects have been devastating for Rotish and Joykumar, who
rely on rice distributed as ration instead of their homegrown paddy. Rotish observes a
70 percent decrease in his paddy production, which he blames on the excess silt
accumulated in the wetland. Lamenting at the loss of food security, he comments,
“We would pride in feeding our guests fish from the beel and paddy from our fields.
Now, that is impossible.”

In Son Beel, overfishing, upstream pollution and agricultural encroachment,
are destroying the sanctity of the diverse ecosystem. Local fishermen use gigantic
gill nets with small holes –locally referred to as mahajaal, to that drag the bed of the
wetland, entrapping young fishes and eggs, apart from the usual catch. “Unlike the
traditional fishing nets, these mosquito-net lookalikes trap more life than they are
supposed to do,” says Anwaruddin Choudhury, an ornithologist thriving in the
region, as documented by Anwaruddin. Among the many birds he marked during his
sightings in Son Beel, are the openbill stork, the lesser adjutant stork, the golden
plover, the whiskered tern, the great cormorant, the Indian cormorant, the common
cormorant, the Brahminy kite, and the black redstart. However, most of these birds
have shrunk in numbers, either due to poaching or habitat destruction and are rarely
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