The Better India · 5 hours ago

Women in Kashmir Are Restoring Wetlands & Protecting Migratory Birds

Along the banks of Kashmir's Hokersar wetland, a thirteen-year-old named Alimah Hamid is compiling a book about migratory birds for school children, while around her, the fifteen members of the Salim Ali Birdwatchers Network review their month's work - wetlands cleaned, pamphlets made, villages visited. Launched in January 2025, SABN is Jammu and Kashmir's first women-led birding network, born from the recognition that Kashmiri women had long been doing this work alone and unnoticed: "because of the lack of any organisational support, their efforts have not been known to the government and public." Since the group began restoring Chatlam wetland together, the number of migratory birds visiting the site has more than doubled, from fewer than 50,000 to an estimated one lakh in a single season. What the story quietly insists upon is that conservation, like most things that last, is less a matter of expertise than of showing up - every Sunday, with plastic bags and binoculars, in a place worth saving.