A vast shoreline forest of willow trees is being chopped down and dredged out in Kashmir Valley to help restore water levels, fish stocks and wildlife in one of Asia’s largest bodies of freshwater.
The 2.2 million willows that were planted around Wullar Lake and its tributaries, fed by melted snow and ice and rain, suck up water and trap silt. They were planted from 1916 to 2002 under various government programs designed to provide firewood to the region’s residents and to dry out land for farming.
But the plantations have contributed to a halving of the lake’s surface area and destroyed marshes that protected the region from floods and seasonal water shortages. As the lake shrank, villagers’ hauls of fish and water chestnuts declined. The trees drop their leaves into the water, loading the lake with nutrients and debris.
An effort to fell the willows began Jan. 22, when state forest workers took their axes and handsaws to stands along the lake’s northeastern shoreline.
The same arboreal qualities that made the willows so attractive to government officials last century now make their removal a formidable task. The trees grow fast and recover quickly from injury.
“To save the lake you have to cut the trees,” said Ritesh Kumar, a conservation program manager at Wetlands International, which studied the lake and produced a 135-page management plan in 2007 under a state government contract. “But even if you cut them down at the roots, the shoots come back up again.”
After the trees are cut down, their severed roots and the silt they accumulated will be dredged out, a task that is expected to take five to 10 years.
The project is part of a broader effort to restore the tourist-drawing glory of the lakes and rivers that carpet the valley.
About 60 kilometers south of Wullar Lake, in the city of Srinigar, Dal Lake is a popular destination for domestic tourists. It is covered with vacation houseboats and shikaras, small tourist-ferrying vessels that resemble Venetian gondolas. But the lake becomes overly crowded in the summer, it’s heavily polluted and its water levels have fallen.
Tensions between the state government and India’s central government, the threat of terrorist attacks and disputes with nearby Pakistan have kept most visitors away from the remote Wullar Lake. Indian officials hope that restoring the region’s waterways will help woo new tourists to more secluded parts of Kashmir as long-simmering tensions gradually calm down.
But the tree-felling efforts are primarily designed to expand Wullar Lake and resuscitate shoreline marshes. The wetlands soak up water during warmer months as it gushes down from melting snow and glaciers in the Himalayas. They release it in the drier winter months, moderating a year-round flow of water to wildlife and residents, which drains into the River Indus and then south through Pakistan.
The sponge-like qualities of the marshes are becoming more important as the climate changes and upstream glaciers wither, which is increasing melt flows, according to Mr. Kumar. Mr. Kumar’s group found that 70 percent of the marshes surrounding Wullar Lake and its tributaries have disappeared, drained in some places for agriculture and displaced from others by the willows.
“To get flood protection in Srinigar, you need a flood-regulating system in Wullar,” Mr. Kumar said. “If Wullar Lake is not able to perform that soaking function, Srinigar is going to head into a water crisis of extreme order. You get more floods and you get more droughts.”
The Indian government is financing the tree-removal effort, but the 1.2 billion rupees ($22.3 million) so far set aside for the project will meet less than one-third of the total needed to complete the task, according to Abdul Razak, chief executive director of the Wullar Conservation and Management Authority, a state agency.
Mr. Razak said he is confident that the Indian government will eventually fully finance the project. “The money will definitely come,” he said. “They have promised me.”
