Fishermen’s hopes shattered as weather extremes batter Wular Lake

Bandipora, Jan 18: For Mushtaq Ahmad Dar (50) of Saderkoot Payeen village, on the fringes of Wular Lake in north Kashmir’s Bandipora district, survival has become a daily ordeal. A fisherman supporting a family of eight, Dar now spends long hours on the lake only to return home with empty hands.

He is not alone. For weeks, over a hundred fishermen from his village have struggled to earn a living as erratic weather patterns have battered the fragile lake ecosystem, crippling lotus stem (nadru), water chestnut and fish production.

The crisis began last summer with the collapse of the lotus stem crop, a prized local delicacy and a key source of income. After nearly two decades of absence, the crop had shown signs of revival following the dredging of about four square kilometres by the Wular Conservation and Management Authority (WUCMA). By the summer of 2025, lotus blooms had spread across parts of the lake near Saderkoot Payeen, raising hopes among locals and conservationists alike.

Those hopes were dashed by September, when floodwaters from the Jhelum inundated the lake basin.

“At that stage, the plants were completing their growth to form stems,” Dar said. “The sudden floods drowned them. Many withered completely, and whatever survived produced stems too thin to harvest.” Locals estimate that nearly 50 per cent of the lotus stem crop was destroyed.

If floods ruined the summer, winter brought the opposite problem. An extended dry spell has sharply reduced water levels, halting the water chestnut harvest—traditionally a dependable, year-long source of income.

“In a normal year, we harvest chestnuts throughout the licensed period. This time, we managed barely two or three weeks,” Dar said. “After that, it became almost nothing. We have never sat idle like this before.”

With crops failing, fishermen turned to fishing, only to find catches dwindling there too. Receding water levels have made fishing increasingly unviable.

“Earlier, 50 men would go out fishing. Now only five turn up,” Dar said. “They hardly catch two to five kilograms. Some days, there is no catch at all.”

He attributes the decline not just to dry weather, but to the lake’s deteriorating health. Heavy siltation, pollution and shrinking depth, he says, are choking the ecosystem.

“All the plastic waste and garbage from the Valley is thrown into the Jhelum and eventually reaches Wular,” he said, adding that soil erosion from surrounding mountains has further filled the lake bed. “Everything the lake gives us depends on water. When there is no depth, our livelihood collapses.”

The community is now urging the government to scale up conservation efforts. While acknowledging that earlier dredging brought limited relief, Dar said it was inadequate for the nearly 30 villages that directly depend on the lake.

“Even if dredging helped a hundred families here, how is that enough?” he asked. “There are dozens of villages whose survival depends entirely on Wular. The lake’s water-holding capacity must be restored across its entire stretch.”

The scale of the crisis is stark. Naseer Ahmad, an executive member of the fishermen’s association in Bandipora, said much of the lake has virtually dried up.

“Only areas close to the Jhelum banks retain some water. The rest has dried up,” Ahmad said. He noted that while around 30,000 families depend directly on the lake, an estimated 1.5 lakh people are affected directly or indirectly.

Spanning Bandipora and Baramulla districts, Wular Lake accounts for nearly 60 per cent of Jammu and Kashmir’s total fish production.

WUCMA Project Coordinator Owais Farooq Mir acknowledged that floods had damaged lotus flowering and the crop, though he said the damage was not “significant” as many stems had still managed to grow. He also confirmed that the dry spell had adversely affected chestnuts and fish due to reduced inflow from the Jhelum and other feeder streams.

“Winter is generally a lean season, while peak activity is from May to July,” Mir said, adding that precipitation has remained low since the flood episode.

He warned that a snowless winter could further impact the upcoming peak season. “With no snow in the mountains, water levels in the Jhelum and other sources will fall, leaving the lake with low water levels and directly affecting crops,” he said.

Mir said the Wular Management Plan is currently being revised, with fishermen and other stakeholders involved, to address long-standing issues such as siltation, pollution and plastic waste—problems that now threaten both the lake’s ecology and the livelihoods it sustains.