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After three decades, lotus flowers have started blooming in the Wular lake of Kashmir. The re -appearance of the flower crop in the river of North Kashmir has renewed the hope for those communities who once depended on the lake for their livelihood.
Flowers-Known for their stems, Nadru, after accumulating thick layers of silt across the lake after a prized vegetable-destructive 1992 flood in large-scale non-vegetarian dishes of the valley.
The revival of Lotus is being held responsible for the ongoing disillum and restoration project by the Wular Lake Management Authority.
The efforts, starting in 2020, aims to restore the original depth of the lake and improve the flow of water by removing the silt and waste made by the Jhelum River and its tributaries.
“We thought it would never return,” Mohammad Yakub, a local farmer from the neighboring village, told a local news agency in Kashmir.
He said, “My father used to harvest the lotus stems here. When I was young, I used to help him. Then the flood got flooded and everything changed,” he said
Spread over about 200 square kilometers and located between the cities of Bandipora and Sopore, Wular Lake was once a major source of income for hundreds of families in the region from Asia’s largest freshwater lake.
Lotus stem, is a predominant in traditional Kashmiri cuisine, also provided seasonal employment, especially during rigid winter when other livelihood options were rare.
Lotus also increases in Dal Lake and Manasbal Lake in the valley.
Officials said that when the trunk of Lotus was not seen for decades, the root structures of the plant were buried under the silt.
“Lotus has seen a revival in areas where we have removed silt in the last few years. Since the seeds of Lotus were deeply buried inside the silt and soil, they could not grow. Now silt has been removed, Lotus has developed again,” says Mudsir Ahmed, a regional officer of the Wular Protection and Management Authority, says Mudsir Ahmed, ” Indian express,
Officials said that more than 7.9 million cubic meters of work has been removed from the lake from 7.9 million cubic meters silt. This year, the authorities introduced lotus seeds in areas where the dragging was completed.
The officials involved in the conservation scheme said that the big goal is to install the prominent valleys with major currents to prevent future silt and waste from entering the lake.
Zahur Ahmed, a resident of Laharwalpora, said that local families had tried to resume Kamal on their own. “We threw seeds in the lake several times, but nothing increased,” he said.
“This is only now, after the silt is cleaned, that we see flowers again.”
Ahmed told the news agency that Lotus’s return is not only a sign of ecological reform, but also a source of renewed economic activity for many houses around the lake.
We thought it would never return.
Kashmir witnessed disastrous floods in September 1992, causing a lot of damage to the rich ecosystem of Valular Lake by collecting large amounts of silt, which buried the lotus vegetation.
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