India’s rarest heron faces a silent end as new dam ignores its home

The white-bellied heron (Ardea insignis)is among the world’s most elusive birds, nesting along fast-flowing rivers lined with old growth forests.

“India has a population of six to nine individuals distributed in three rivers: Noa-Dehing River, Lahm River and Lohit River,” Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bengaluru, project manager Yumlam Benjamin Bida said. “Out of these three rivers, Lahm is a tributary of the Lohit River and the river basin harbours 70% of India’s white-bellied herons.”

Yet on the Lohit, the Forest Advisory Committee under the Union Environment Ministry has granted in-principle clearance to a 1,200-MW hydroelectric power project that will fell more than 33,000 trees. The environmental impact assessment for the project also omitted white-bellied herons.

Borrowed time

“White-bellied herons have a very unique foraging strategy due to their huge body size” — up to around four feet tall, Mr. Bida said. “They hunt in shallow … water and their dietary composition is only fish. They wait for the fish to come near and then strike it.”

He added that the dam, once it is built, will alter the water’s turbidity and flow, which could lead to the bird’s “local extinction”.

In 1878, the British ornithologist and naturalist Allan Octavian Hume first scientifically described the white-bellied heron based on specimens from the Teesta region in eastern India. The species is not known to occur there today.

In fact, the bird has been listed as ‘critically endangered’ on the IUCN Red List since 2007.

According to Mr. Bida, it is not unknown for substantial changes in river conditions to lead to highly specialised species vanishing from that landscape.

Also, “The riparian mature forest plays a critical role for white-bellied herons, both for rooting and nesting,” he continued. “The hydroelectric power project will clear the mature riparian forest and let it get submerged, impacting the breeding of the species.”

He also said Walong cantonment, located 12-15 km from the proposed project site, is a known breeding site for the species.

‘No human disturbance’

White-bellied herons are in Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 and thus enjoy the highest level of legal protection. Even so, their range and population have declined significantly in the last century.

A 2019 review by the Tropical Resources Institute recorded the birds in parts of Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar at the beginning of the 20th century. Today they are restricted to pockets of Arunachal Pradesh, Bhutan, and Myanmar.

“The white-bellied heron is known to inhabit Himalayan river systems up to elevations of about 1,500 m above sea level,” Murali Krishna, a wildlife ecologist who has worked extensively in the Eastern Himalaya, said.

“Based on my several years of observation in Arunachal Pradesh, the species appears to avoid even minimal anthropogenic disturbance and usually uses tall trees for nesting, in those areas where there is no human disturbance.”

Imon Abedin, a field biologist with Aaranyak, an environmental protection organisation, said white-bellied herons’ survival thus depends on the integrity of the Eastern Himalaya’s fast-flowing rivers.

Overlooked in assessment

The project is being developed by the Tehri Hydro Development Corporation India, Ltd. in partnership with the Arunachal Pradesh government. The environmental impact assessment for the project was prepared by WAPCOS, Ltd, a consultancy firm under the Ministry of Jal Shakti.

Although the Lohit River basin harbours most of these birds in India, the species did not feature in the project’s impact assessment. According to the minutes of the Forest Advisory Committee meeting on December 19, 2025, State officials told the committee the birds had not been included because they had not been recorded within the project’s diversion area.

The project has also faced sustained opposition from local communities. Roshman Tawsik, resident of the Nukung Village and president of the District Congress Party Committee, said residents have opposed the project since it was first proposed in 2008.

“We do not want to sacrifice so much of our land and watch it getting submerged,” he said.

During a public hearing on August 20, 2025, community members questioned the reliability of the baseline data WAPCOS used in its assessment and said the draft assessment did not accurately reflect local realities. One participant noted that important flora and fauna, including a medical plant, had been excluded. Mr. Tawsik also criticised the report for not documenting the tribe’s cultural practice of using natural indicators.

The draft also left out the affected villages of Nukung and Mla as well as the amended social impact assessment.

Ecological complexity

The Committee’s consent will allow for compensatory afforestation in 51 patches of land in Madhya Pradesh, which is more than a thousand kilometres away from the Lohit River basin.

“Natural forests are highly complex ecological systems that develop over long periods through interactions of climatic, edaphic, and biotic factors, and hence cannot be fully recreated through human interventions,” Mr. Krishna said.

He added that project assessments often fail to capture the ecological complexity of the region.

“The Eastern Himalayas are highly complex due to their topography, climatic variability and diverse forest types, and they form part of a global biodiversity hotspot,” he said. So developmental interventions require “careful planning and a strong ecological understanding”, and authorities must “move from region specific impact and look into impact at a broader level”.

“For a species like white-bellied herons, … there should be a basin-level approach, which entails assessing Lohit basin as one connected habitat, rather than looking at the site in isolation while assessing impacts on nesting, roosting, and feeding areas for white-bellied herons,” Mr. Bida said.

Mr. Abedin also said the species faces multiple pressures, including changes in river courses, removal of large river boulders, unregulated tourism, fish poisoning, sand extraction, and pollution.

As a result, “there is often no clear roadmap to adequately compensate for its ecological impacts, especially for species like the white-bellied herons, which already exist in extremely precarious conditions.”

Beyond charismatic wildlife

Mr. Krishna said he believes conservation planning needs to move beyond its narrow focus on charismatic wildlife, like tigers and elephants, and adopt a more informed approach that would treat conservation efforts “like on a war-footing” and giving rare species like white-bellied herons the same level of urgency afforded to better-known conservation priorities.

He also said India should develop conservation breeding centres for the species and learn from Bhutan’s programme, which is the world’s first captive facility designed to hatch and rear critically endangered birds. 

For those in the field, better environmental governance must also be complemented by site-specific conservation measures, experts said.

According to Mr. Abedin, preventing illegal sand extraction, monitoring water quality, and limiting disturbance from tourism could help stabilise the species’ remaining population.

“While it’s important for conservation and development to go hand-in-hand, better planning and, more importantly, effective on-ground implementation of policies are essential,” Mr. Krishna added. “Although strong policies exist on paper, there is a clear gap in implementation.”

Aditya Ansh is an independent media writer in New Delhi.