The Sangai Deer of Keibul Lamjao, Counted at 14 in 1975 and 260 in Manipur's 2016 Census, Live on 40 Square Kilometres of Floating Meadow on Loktak Lake, a Ramsar Site Since 1990

The sangai, the brow-antlered deer of Manipur, was counted at 14 animals in a 1975 aerial survey and at 260 in the state forest department’s census of March 2016. Every wild one lives in a single place, Keibul Lamjao National Park, a reserve of about 40 sq km on the southern edge of Loktak Lake whose ground is a floating mat of plants and soil.

The forest department’s most recent report, the Sangai Census Report 2026, counted 172 sangai and 375 hog deer in the park. The Chief Wildlife Warden’s notice scheduled the census for 20 to 27 February 2026. Later sections set that figure beside the others on record, because the counts do not all agree.

A park whose ground floats

The floating ground is called phumdi. Down To Earth describes it as mats of soil and organic material woven together by native plants and grasses, with about a quarter of each mat above the water and thickness running from a few centimetres to more than two metres. The Wildlife Institute of India (WII), the government’s wildlife research body in Dehradun, has found that a mat must be at least one metre thick to carry an adult sangai, according to the same report.

Mongabay India puts the national park at 40 sq km and says only about 22 sq km of it is continuous phumdi thick enough to hold the deer. Current Conservation gives 23 sq km. The Loktak Development Authority, the body of the Manipur government that manages the lake, says the park is a continuous mass of floating phumdi of about 27 sq km and calls it the largest floating protected wildlife area in the world. Mongabay and Down To Earth both call it the only floating national park.

The lake itself is listed under the Ramsar Convention, the international treaty on wetlands. The Ramsar Sites Information Service gives the designation date as 23 March 1990 and the area as 26,600 hectares, which is 266 sq km. Other sources give figures from 236 sq km (the Eastern Mirror) to 287 sq km (the Observer Research Foundation’s brief and Mongabay’s 2022 reporting), so the lake’s size depends on the survey and the season.

The Loktak Development Authority’s 2025 to 2026 annual report says phumdis occupy almost half the lake’s area. It also records that 45 villages and 29 towns lie in and around Loktak and its linked wetlands, and that 14 per cent of the Manipur valley’s population lives in and around the lake.

Declared extinct, then found again in the early 1950s

Accounts of the rediscovery differ on the year. Down To Earth says the deer was declared extinct in 1951 and spotted in the floating meadows a few years later. Madras Courier dates the find of a remnant herd to 1953. Current Conservation credits the British tea planter and naturalist Edward Pritchard Gee with the rediscovery and gives the year as 1951, and says his report appeared in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society in December 1960.

The 1992 viability assessment for the species, written up by the Zoo Outreach Organisation, describes what followed. A relict population of fewer than 100 was found around mid-century. A flood then killed many animals, and the census after it counted 14. Alarmed by the number, the authorities notified the area, which became a national park in 1977. The same document says the Manipur forest department had passed its own wildlife rules before the national Wildlife Protection Act of 1972.

Current Conservation says M. K. Ranjitsinh’s aerial survey of 1975, made after that Act, found 14 deer in the area now notified as the park. The accounts do not say whether the 1975 survey and the post-flood census were the same count.

Zoos hold a back-up. The 1992 assessment says the captive population came from four animals taken from the wild, two sent to Calcutta in 1956 and two to Delhi in 1962, and that Indian zoos held about 100 sangai by 1992. Down To Earth says about 200 more are in Indian zoos now. The deer is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List and in Schedule I of India’s Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, according to Madras Courier.

From 14 to 260, and the counts that disagree

A summary page in the same 1992 document puts the wild population at about 137 in 1994. The Assam Tribune’s report on the 2013 census gives 180 for 2003 and 204 for 2013, made up of 90 stags, 86 hinds and 28 fawns. The Eastern Mirror’s March 2018 report says the census of March 2016 found 260, and that experts estimate the park can support about 297. The 1992 assessment had modelled a carrying capacity of 300.

Those counts come from observers at fixed points. The 2013 count used 32 spots and the 2018 count used 31 counting points, with 74 research scholars, students, NGO members and wildlife staff taking part in 2018, according to the Eastern Mirror.

Other estimates run lower. Down To Earth reports that a 2022 to 2023 conservation plan by the WII found 64 deer in the wild, and says the 2016 figure may be inflated. In 2018 Mongabay quoted WII biologists as putting the number of breeding adults at fewer than 100, against the forest department’s figure of about 260. The sources opened for this article do not reconcile the two series.

The 2026 census sits between the two. The Eastern Mirror reports that the Sangai Census Report 2026, released at the 77th Van Mahotsav in Imphal and covered on 19 July 2026, estimated 172 sangai and 375 hog deer. The hog deer shares the phumdi with the sangai. The newspaper does not compare the figure with earlier censuses, and it does not give the census method.

The barrage that changed the water

The Ithai barrage, on the Manipur river at the lake’s only outlet, is part of the Loktak Hydroelectric Project. The Observer Research Foundation says the 105 MW project was commissioned in 1983, with three units of 35 MW. Signpost News, reporting the Environment Minister’s statements in April 2023, says construction began in 1971.

The barrage keeps the lake higher through the year. The Observer Research Foundation’s brief says the annual fluctuation in water level fell from about 3.1 m to about 1.4 m after it was built. Mongabay says the lake is held at 769.12 m above mean sea level. Researchers quoted by Mongabay say the older cycle let phumdis touch the lake bed in the dry season, take up nutrients and rise again with the monsoon.

A satellite study by R. D. Kangabam, M. Selvaraj and M. Govindaraju compared 1977 and 2015 images. India Water Portal reports that thin-vegetation phumdis declined by nearly 50 sq km over that period, and that the authors link the change to the barrage and to land use around the lake. Down To Earth adds that monsoon backflow from the project erodes phumdis inside the park and carries sewage from downstream towns.

Signpost News reports that in April 2023 NHPC, the company that runs the project, agreed to lower the barrage’s water level gradually to the drawdown level from November 2023, to help the park’s habitat. No source opened for this article reports what happened after that date. The Environment Minister said in the same coverage that the project predates the environmental clearance rules of 1994 and 2006.

Ramsar listing, the Montreux Record and the lake authority

The Ramsar Convention keeps a register called the Montreux Record of listed wetlands that need priority attention. Its guidance document lists Loktak among India’s three entries, added in 1993 for deforestation in the catchment, water hyacinth and pollution. The Ramsar site page gives the date as 16 June 1993. The other two Indian entries in that document were Keoladeo and Chilika. Chilika was later taken off the record, as tuput’s account of the lake sets out.

The Government of Manipur set up the Loktak Development Authority in 1986. It is a statutory body under the Manipur Loktak Lake (Protection) Act, 2006, notified on 5 April 2006, and the Chief Minister heads it. Its 2025 to 2026 report lists degraded phumdis in the park among its main problems and says its next project is an Integrated Plan for Wise Use of Loktak Lake: five years, Rs 145.26 crore, approved by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

The Sentinel reported on 20 March 2024 that the Centre had approved an integrated management plan with delisting from the Montreux Record among its aims, along with extraction of floating biomass, water-quality work and consolidation of the park’s boundaries. The Authority’s report says it has filed an affidavit in the Manipur High Court seeking leave to begin new projects. The Observer Research Foundation notes a 7 August 2019 High Court order that bars new projects on the lake without the court’s permission.

The Union Environment Minister said in April 2023, as Signpost News reports, that the Ministry had funded Manipur for the lake since 1988 to 1989 and had released Rs 16.86 crore.

The search for a second home

The 1992 assessment recommended establishing additional wild populations elsewhere in the species’ range, because one flood, fire or disease outbreak could harm the only herd. Mongabay reported in 2018 that the WII had identified Pumlen Pat, a wetland, and the adjoining Thongam Mondum Reserve Forest, together 63 sq km in Thoubal district, as suitable for a second population, and that the sixth State Board for Wildlife meeting discussed the site in May 2017.

Madras Courier reported in August 2024 that the WII considers Pumlen Pat the most suitable of five locations it identified. Local communities have opposed the move for fear of losing access to the lake and their fishing, and the WII has said local access would not be lost. The conservation geneticist Ajay Gaur told Mongabay in 2018 that the herd’s low genetic variability makes it vulnerable to disease and reduced fertility.

The 2026 census report, as the Eastern Mirror describes it, calls competition between sangai and hog deer a growing ecological concern. It also flags a low count of juveniles and fawns and recommends moving hog deer out of the park to other suitable protected areas.