Context: The Kamrup (Metropolitan) district administration has prohibited community fishing at Deepor Beel, a wetland on the south-western edge of Guwahati and Assam’s only Ramsar site.

• The prohibition order under Section 144 of the Cr.PC underlines the possibility of community fishing on January 3 and will remain beyond the mid-January Magh or Bhogali Bihu that is preceded by mass fishing in many parts of the State.
• District officials said the order was necessary to prevent fishing, excavation and construction in and around the wetland that has been shrinking over the years.

Deepor Beel

• Deepor Beel was designated a Ramsar site in 2002 for sustaining a range of aquatic life forms besides 219 species of birds.
• It is a permanent freshwater lake in a former channel of the Brahmaputra River
• According to hydrological experts, the area of the wetland was about 6,000 hectares in the late 1980s. Satellite imagery has revealed that its area has shrunk by at least 35% since 1991.
• Deepor Beel officially has an area of 4,014 hectares or 15.5 square miles.
• One of the reasons the wetland is in a precarious state is that it is losing connectivity with small rivers like Kalmoni, Khonajan and Basistha that used to flow via the Mora Bharalu channel through Guwahati
• A Ramsar site is a wetland designated to be of international importance under the Convention on Wetlands on February 2, 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the Caspian Sea shore.

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/community-fishing-banned-at-assam-ramsar-site/article33478646.ece?homepage=true

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