Keibul Lamjao National Park

Keibul Lamjao National Park is the only floating national park in the world, located in the Bishnupur district of Manipur in northeastern India, occupying the southeastern fringe of Loktak Lake, the largest freshwater lake in the region. The park was first notified as a sanctuary in 1966 and elevated to national park status in 1977 under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, which confers the highest level of statutory protection available to a terrestrial habitat in India. Its defining purpose is the conservation of the Sangai (Rucervus eldii eldii), the Manipur brow-antlered deer, a critically threatened subspecies that is the state animal of Manipur and was once believed extinct before its rediscovery in 1951. The park covers roughly 40 square kilometres and rests upon a unique ecosystem that gives it both its scientific significance and its appeal as a recurring subject in UPSC General Studies Paper III environment questions.

The park's most distinctive feature is the phumdi, a heterogeneous mass of vegetation, soil, and decomposing organic matter that floats on the surface of Loktak Lake. These floating biomass mats range in thickness, and during the dry season their lower portions rest on the lakebed, drawing nutrients before refloating as water levels rise. The Sangai has adapted to walk delicately across this springy substrate, earning it the local name "dancing deer" from its hesitant, balancing gait. The phumdi sustains an entire trophic structure, supporting grasses and reeds that constitute the deer's forage, while the surrounding open water and marsh provide habitat for hog deer, wild boar, otters, and a large population of migratory and resident waterbirds. The ecological mechanics of the park are therefore inseparable from the hydrology of Loktak Lake itself.

Management of the park rests with the Manipur Forest Department, which conducts periodic Sangai population censuses, controls poaching, and monitors phumdi thickness, since a phumdi that grows too thin loses the structural integrity needed to bear the deer's weight. Conservation interventions include habitat improvement, regulation of fishing activity at the park margins, and coordination with the Loktak Development Authority, which governs the broader lake under the Manipur Loktak Lake (Protection) Act, 2006. The park is bounded on three sides by the lake and is accessed primarily from the village of Phubala and observation points at Pabot and Toya hills, from which the floating habitat can be surveyed.

In contemporary policy terms, Keibul Lamjao recurs in environmental discourse alongside Loktak Lake, which was designated a Wetland of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention in 1990 and was later placed on the Montreux Record in 1993, signalling ecological change of concern. The Ithai Barrage, commissioned in 1983 as part of the Loktak Hydroelectric Project operated by the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC), altered the lake's natural water regime by maintaining artificially high and stable water levels. Conservationists and bodies such as the Wildlife Institute of India have documented how this disrupted the seasonal grounding of phumdi, thinning the floating mats and degrading Sangai habitat. The Sangai population, estimated in the low hundreds in recent state censuses, remains classified as Endangered on the IUCN Red List.

Keibul Lamjao must be distinguished from adjacent conservation categories. Unlike a wildlife sanctuary, a national park under the Wild Life (Protection) Act prohibits all grazing, private land rights, and resource extraction within its boundaries, whereas sanctuaries permit certain regulated activities. It is also distinct from the broader Ramsar wetland designation attached to Loktak Lake: the Ramsar listing is an international soft-law commitment to wise use of wetlands, while the national park designation is a domestic statutory instrument with criminal enforcement provisions. The park likewise differs from a biosphere reserve, which operates on a zonation model with transition and buffer zones permitting human habitation, a structure absent here.

Several controversies attend the park. The fixed water levels behind the Ithai Barrage created a persistent tension between the energy objectives of the hydroelectric project and the conservation imperative of the floating habitat, prompting demands for its decommissioning or regulated drawdown. Communities historically dependent on Loktak for fishing have faced displacement and restriction, raising questions of conservation justice that mirror debates elsewhere in Indian protected-area governance. Proposals to translocate a second Sangai population to establish a genetically insured herd outside the single Keibul Lamjao site reflect concern that confining the entire wild subspecies to one degrading habitat constitutes an unacceptable extinction risk. Phumdi thinning, siltation, and invasive species such as Para grass have been identified as continuing threats in scientific monitoring.

For the working practitioner, Keibul Lamjao National Park functions as a compact case study in the intersection of biodiversity law, wetland hydrology, energy infrastructure, and indigenous livelihoods. Civil services aspirants encounter it as the textbook answer to the floating national park question and as an illustration of how a single-species endemic conservation strategy can become hostage to upstream water management decisions. For environmental policy analysts and desk officers handling northeastern affairs, the park exemplifies the governance challenge of reconciling a Ramsar-listed wetland, a statutory national park, and a functioning hydroelectric asset within one closed ecological system, where any intervention in water level cascades directly into the survival prospects of an endangered subspecies.