Keti Bunder – A Wildlife Sanctuary at Thatha, Sindh
Keti Bunder is part of Indus Delta and situated at Thatha district, Sindh, Pakistan. The diversity of avian dominance and diversity of Keti Bunder; carried out at dawn and dusk in the winter season. Keti Bunder is situated at the mouth of the River Indus recognized as Ochito, which is entering through Hajamro creek consisting of an area of 9,130 hectares.
The mangrove forests are key forest and ecological features of this region. These mangroves covering an area of 2,631ha with the large size of 1996 ha. However, the medium size is about 3,588 ha with sparsely distributed. The remaining part consists of human settlements, Sand dunes, and water channels.
The area is consisting of a large number of channels on the western and the eastern sides. Whereas, on the other two sides are shallow and deep-water channels namely Hajamro Creek, Khobar Creek, Dabbo Creek, and Qalandri Creek.
Keti Bunder consists of 195 villages with the estimated population of the whole is about 27,405 and the number of households is more than 4,000. These towns are widely distributed in 35 acres area around the seawater. In a survey, around 49 winter season bird species belonging to 33 genera and 21 families were recorded. A total of 4280 birds were recorded dedicated survey effort from the Keti Bunder.
The most abundant species in this area are little egret, cattle egret, greater flamingo, greater egret, and common coot. The beautiful bird species number is decreasing with the passage of time due to anthropogenic impacts especially pollution impact.
The exponential growth of the population of humans has badly impacted the avian species in many ways such as; habitat loss, deforestation, invasive species, agriculture intensification, urbanization, industrialization, human-avian negative interactions, and climate change.
Almost, 90% of people are engaged with the fish industry. These fishermen are with different casts present in the area. The Syed and Memon communities are said to be well-reputed in terms of socioeconomic status, while the majority of them have a small business with agriculture land. The people are involved in fisheries in different ways as; fishermen, boat owners, boat captain, helpers in factories, transporters, merchant shops and drivers of fish carrier vehicles.
Keti Bunder is a Wildlife Sanctuary; for the conservation of water birds. The winter visitor and summer breeder’s birds are herons, egrets, waders, pelicans and raptors. Common terrestrial mammals are fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrrinus), Indian wild boar (Sus scrofa), Asiatic jackal (Canis aureus) and Indian porcupine (Manis crassicaudatus).
The most common reptiles are sea snakes, vipers, cobras and lizards. For the identification of avian species was a wildlife sanctuary, 2nd was Keti Bunder port and the remaining two were rural areas of the habitats. Each place visited for four months. Once in each month and twice a day at dawn and dusk.
Only one bird watcher moves from one place to another through ship or boat to measure bird diversity. The species of birds in the winter season from Head Qadirabad, Punjab. The freshwater areas of Pakistan have a high species number as compared to coastal areas of Pakistan. The freshwater landscapes have higher and unique nesting, roosting, feeding, shelter and breeding sites as compared with coastal areas.
However, the other reason is that industrial wastes, pesticides, household wastes are dumped in all rivers that polluted rivers water is entered in coastal water from all over the rivers of Pakistan. The anthropogenic impacts like deforestation, land degradation, agriculture use, shipping, high rate of fishing, urbanization, fertilizers and pesticide use, and ethno-avian use the main causes of species depletion.
The species number is getting low while the population of the bird is higher as compared with freshwater birds. The reason is that homogeneity in the landscape in the coastal area e.g. only mangrove plantation is present while freshwater landscapes have heterogeneity in landscapes, i.e., grasses, herbs, shrubs, and tree plantation.
It is concluded that bird species number is decreasing with the passage of time and noted that freshwater birds’ diversity is higher than coastal birds’ species. The reason is that pollution rat is increasing day by day in coastal areas of Pakistan. But it is also noted that less heterogeneity of landscape of the coastal area of Pakistan as compared with the freshwater landscape.
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