Keoladeo National Park, the Bharatpur Marsh Built for the Maharaja's Duck Shoots, Became a Ramsar Site in 1981 and a World Heritage Site in 1985 With More Than 360 Recorded Bird Species

Keoladeo National Park, 2,873 hectares of marsh and woodland about 2 km southeast of Bharatpur town in Rajasthan, went onto the Ramsar list of wetlands of international importance on 1 October 1981 and onto the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985. UNESCO’s text says some 364 bird species have been recorded there, including the Siberian crane. IUCN’s 2025 outlook cites 375 species and rates the site “good with some concerns”.

The park is made by people. IUCN’s 2020 assessment opens by calling it an “artificially created and maintained wetland site”. Dykes divide it into ten units, each with sluice gates, and the 1985 nomination says it would not hold such numbers of waterfowl without water let in from a dam outside its boundary. The IUCN data sheet adds that the name Ghana means thicket, because the park is the only place with much tree cover in a semi-arid district.

A marsh flooded for the Maharaja’s guns

Sahapedia says Maharaja Suraj Mal built the Ajan Bund, an earthen dam south of the park, in the mid-1700s, and that the bund first flooded the reserve in 1901. Sources date the start of the duck-shooting preserve differently. The data sheet filed with UNESCO says the marshes were made in the 1850s, the nomination summary says the park began in 1900 as a private shooting preserve, and Sahapedia says it was developed for duck shooting at the end of the 19th century.

Lord Curzon, then Viceroy, formally opened the reserve with an organised shoot in 1902, according to Sahapedia. The birding site 10,000 Birds dates that shoot to December 1902, names Lord Kitchener among the guests and says seventeen people shot 540 ducks.

The largest bag came on 12 November 1938, when a party led by the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, shot a record number of birds in a day. Sahapedia gives 4,373. 10,000 Birds gives 4,273, and says stone plaques recording the bags still stand in the reserve.

Peter Jackson, who wrote in Sanctuary Asia about visits from the 1950s onward, remembered the shoots of the 1960s: the Maharaja held them for friends, and Siberian cranes lifted off and circled calling as the guns fired, then came down to feed when it was over. The IUCN data sheet says the last big shoot was in 1964 and that the Maharaja kept shooting rights until 1972. Sahapedia says shooting went on until 1965 and the rulers’ hunting rights were withdrawn in 1972.

From bird sanctuary to Ramsar site and World Heritage list

The reserve was notified as a bird sanctuary on 13 March 1956, Sahapedia says, after Salim Ali’s efforts. A boundary wall, 32 km long and 2 m high in the nomination’s description, was built between 1977 and 1981. The Ramsar Sites Information Service records the designation date as 1 October 1981, and Sahapedia calls Keoladeo one of the first two Indian wetlands on the list. Later additions to India’s Ramsar list are covered in our report on Sukhna Wetland and Sauj Jheel. National park status followed. The IUCN data sheet gives 10 March 1982, while Sahapedia gives 26 August 1981 and an area of 28.723 sq km.

India’s nomination reached the World Heritage Secretariat on 18 August 1984. IUCN’s evaluation of March 1985 recommended inscription and called Keoladeo “one of the most important bird habitats in the Indomalayan Realm”. It noted that more than 100 Indian wetlands were larger, but that Keoladeo was the only one where the Siberian crane wintered and that nowhere else in the region were nesting colonies of resident storks and cranes as numerous or as dense. It also said the marshes were the result of careful management and that their upkeep depended on it continuing. The park drew about 80,000 visitors in 1984, 25,000 of them from abroad, the nomination says. IUCN’s outlook now files the same value under criterion (x). Assam’s Kaziranga National Park was inscribed in the same year.

Grazing was a hard chapter. The data sheet says about 2,500 cattle and water buffalo had been allowed in until a ban in November 1982, that local resentment led to an attempt to force entry into the park, and that police fired and eight people were killed.

Salim Ali, Indira Gandhi and the visitor’s book

Jairam Ramesh, writing in Sanctuary Asia in June 2020, traces Indira Gandhi’s decisions on protecting the Bharatpur sanctuary directly to Salim Ali’s appeals. On 7 February 1976 she visited with her family, and Ali, who had just received the Padma Vibhushan, was already there. The party saw about 60 species and, Ramesh writes, she spotted most of them through her own binoculars. In the visitor’s book she wrote that she hoped the lateral road, which brought buses and noise into the middle of the sanctuary, would be closed. The 1985 nomination says a through road was later closed and relocated outside the park. Ramesh adds that Ali helped persuade her to join the Ramsar Convention.

Ali’s own record at Bharatpur runs back further. Jackson writes that Ali saw Siberian cranes there in 1937 and that in 1955 he ringed young open-billed storks at the heronry as the Maharaja’s guest. Our profile of Salim Ali covers his books and his wider conservation record.

364 species, or 375

The count depends on the document. UNESCO’s text and the 1985 nomination say some 364 species have been recorded. IUCN’s 2020 assessment and 2025 page cite 375, and park officials gave the same figure to 101Reporters in September 2026, splitting it into 200 migratory, 100 local migratory and 75 resident species.

IUCN’s 2020 assessment says the park is a breeding ground for about 115 species and has recorded 42 species of raptors. It lists five Critically Endangered, two Endangered and six Vulnerable species among the residents. UNESCO says the winter visitors come from Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, China and Siberia. The 1985 data sheet names gadwall, shoveler, common teal, tufted duck, painted stork, Asian open-billed stork and oriental ibis among the commonest waterbirds, and the Sarus crane with its courtship dance.

Totals move with the water. IUCN’s 2020 assessment says reported flocks may have passed 100,000 until the 1990s and that numbers fell steeply after 2008 to 2009, and it points to data gaps and changing methods that make trends hard to read. Its 2025 page reports heronry counts rising from 20,760 in 2016 to 56,674 in 2019, with the same caution about methods. A mid-winter waterfowl count reported by ETV Bharat on 18 February 2026 found over 55,000 birds of 171 species across the park and 23 satellite wetlands. The district forest officer, Chetan Kumar BV, gave about 30,000 birds and nearly 75 species for the park itself. Earlier counts covered only four or five of the satellite sites, so the report offers no like-for-like comparison.

The Siberian crane years

The 1985 IUCN data sheet recorded 41 Siberian cranes in December 1984, the highest count for many years, and called the park the major wintering ground of what it termed the western population. Sahapedia and the Convention on Migratory Species call it the central population. IUCN set the 41 against about 1,350 eastern-population cranes found at Poyang Lake in China.

Earlier numbers are looser. Jackson writes that in 1959 he took Julian Huxley out in an inflatable boat and they saw a small flock, the first sighting at Bharatpur since Ali’s in 1937. Hundreds are often said to have been counted in the 1960s, but Jackson saw no more than 86. Ramesh puts about 75 in the park during Indira Gandhi’s visit in 1976.

The Convention on Migratory Species calls Keoladeo “the last consistently confirmed wintering area for the species”. Cranes did not arrive in the winter of 2002 to 2003, and the Convention says none has been spotted anywhere in India since. It notes that the absence followed the worst drought in the park’s history, when the wetlands were completely dry. IUCN’s 2025 page also says the crane has not been seen at the site since 2002, but it records the State Party’s view that the cause lies in threats along the migration route. The Hindu reported on 3 February 2011 that the Union environment ministry planned a captive breeding programme for the species at the park.

Where the water comes from

In the data sheet’s description, the marshes were fed twice a year by floods of the Gambira (Gambhiri) and Banganga rivers, held back by the Ajan Bund and let in around July and again in late September or October. The park normally takes about 15 million cubic metres, and four boreholes can be used if the wetland threatens to dry out completely. The IUCN evaluation of 1985 already called the dependence on the monsoon and on pumped water a matter of concern, noting that in 1979 both were inadequate and waterfowl numbers were low.

The rivers’ flow shrank as upstream dams went up. Sharma, Mathur and Jethoo wrote in Biolife in 2016 that the Panchana Dam on the Gambhiri, begun in 1979 and later raised, and works on the Banganga cut the supply, and that water through Panchana to the park stopped completely from 2002 to 2010. Droughts in 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2009 added to the shortfall. The Ramsar convention added Keoladeo to its Montreux Record on 4 July 1990, citing water shortage and an unbalanced grazing regime.

IUCN’s 2025 page says the Chambal pipeline was completed in 2011 and the Govardhan Drain in 2012, so that water now comes from four sources: the Gambhiri through the Ajan Bund, the pipeline, the drain and rain. The minimum external supply is 550 million cubic feet a year, about 15.6 million cubic metres. The Biolife paper says the pipeline, mainly a drinking-water project for Bharatpur district, supplied 297 million cubic feet in 2011, 335 in 2012, 81 in 2013 and 201 in 2014. IUCN’s 2020 assessment says no serious drought year has been recorded since 2013, and that a plan to divert 110 million cubic feet of treated sewage would need strict water-quality monitoring.

Two caveats appear in the record. The Biolife authors found the pipeline water more alkaline than Ajan water (pH 8.0 to 8.3 against 7.2 to 7.6) and without measurable calcium or magnesium, and recommended against using it for long. IUCN’s 2020 and 2025 assessments both rate water management a high threat, saying annual supply varies and often falls short of 550. In September 2026 the park’s assistant conservator of forests, Bharatlal Sharma, told 101Reporters that the Chambal supplies about 62 million cubic feet, roughly a tenth of the need, adding “But it isn’t enough.” The same report says residents of 39 villages gathered at the Panchana Dam during the 2026 monsoon, wanting the water for their own fields, and that the High Court directed the government to release it.

Weeds, catfish and the 2025 rating

The park’s managers have a record of clearing invaders. IUCN’s 2020 assessment says the invasive tree Prosopis juliflora was first planted in the 1970s and that its pure stands grew from 1.32 sq km in 1986 to 4.76 sq km in 2014, from 4 to 16.5 per cent of the park. Removal began in 2007 to 2008 with local communities, and the State Party reported 1,030 hectares cleared by 2014. Sixteen eco-development committees in nearby villages helped clear that and water hyacinth. Removal of the African catfish, which preys on native fish, began in 2009, and 9,044 were taken out in 2020 to 2021. Sahapedia notes a further problem, that Paspalum distichum, a grass, spread after the 1982 grazing ban and displaced plants that waterfowl eat. IUCN’s 2025 page says Prosopis is still spreading faster than it is being removed.

IUCN finalised its latest World Heritage Outlook for Keoladeo on 11 October 2025. It rated the outlook “good with some concerns” and protection and management “mostly effective”, and said the result depends on a sustained water supply, standard monitoring and control of invasive species.