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Environment and Disaster Management › Protected areas and habitats

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Wetlands and Ramsar sites

Wetlands and lakes as places: what a listing changes, encroachment, and the floodplains that decide their fate. Prelims has matched wetlands to their States and asked what the Montreux Record implies.

Foundation note: Wetlands and the Ramsar Convention

UPSC has asked

  • Prelims 2022: matching named wetlands with their States
  • Prelims 2022: the wetland function that makes wetlands the kidneys of the Earth

India's Ramsar sites

Copy link to India's Ramsar sites

Prelims and Mains

A Ramsar site listing commits a country to the wise use of a wetland: it is a promise about how the wetland will be used rather than a fence around it.

  • It is not by itself a protection order under Indian law, so what it changes on the ground depends entirely on Indian law.
  • Domestic protection comes from the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules and from whatever protected area category the wetland happens to fall inside.
  • India has 101 Ramsar sites, against 24 in 2014.

What changed

  1. 3 Aug 2026New

    • Glaw Lake was designated India's 101st Ramsar site, and Arunachal Pradesh's first.
    • It lies inside the Kamlang Tiger Reserve and Wildlife Sanctuary in the Eastern Himalaya, fed by perennial mountain streams.

    PIB, 3 Aug 2026: Glaw Lake becomes India's 101st Ramsar site (opens in a new tab)

UPSC has asked

  • Prelims 2019: the Ramsar Convention and the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2010

Resources

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