21 Jan 2025
INDIA'S LITTLE RANN OF KUTCH
Imagine leaving a legacy that helps ensure the survival of some of the world’s most extraordinary wildlife and their habitats. That’s exactly what David Waterhouse has done by including WWF-Australia in his Will. In his beautifully detailed story, David takes us on a journey to Gujarat State, India, Little Rann of Kutch. This UNESCO-listed wildlife sanctuary, with its seemingly desolate salt flats, reveals a hidden beauty and the remarkable resilience of a unique landscape where rare wildlife continues to thrive.
We hope you enjoy ‘India’s Little Rann of Kutch’ – personal insights and observations by David Waterhouse – a passionate naturalist, storyteller and WWF supporter.
To any outsider, the impression that hits you is that the salt flats of the Little Rann are a god-forsaken grey plain, stretching across 4,954km², with nothing there of interest to anyone.
To the keen naturalist, however, nothing could be further from the truth. There is a considerable amount of wildlife to be found across this vast slab of almost uninhabited country if you have a guide who knows where to look for it.
One can approach this empty northwest corner of India from Ahmedabad along good roads that pass seemingly endless fields of cumin, mustard, cotton and castor oil. Eventually, the cultivation and settlements end, and you find yourself on an empty plain that stretches into the distance. The only signs of habitation are the occasional lonely, makeshift dwellings of a few salt-extracting families, who eke out a living pumping out some of the huge salt reserves that lie not far below the surface of this former seabed.
Much of the natural history interest is to be sought out on the frequent ‘islands’ of slightly higher ground called ‘bets’. These vary in size, but all support grass with scattered acacias, which provide food and cover for a variety of wild animals, including hares, foxes, jackals, nilgai antelope and wild boar. At dusk, if you’re lucky, it may be possible to glimpse a wolf or perhaps a striped hyena as it slinks off into the gloom. A variety of birds occur sparingly among the acacias, including migratory raptors in the cooler months, such as merlins or kestrels. Resident birds include babblers, francolins (often called ‘patridges’) and bulbuls.
Scattered about in small herds, both on the bets and sometimes wandering far out on the salt flats, is the most iconic animal of this empty wilderness, the ghor khar or Indian wild ass. Photographs of the animals in the 1950s were all taken from a speeding vehicle chasing a herd going at full pelt across the plains at fifty kilometres an hour or more for some time before they stood panting with exhaustion. After years of protection, they have lost much of their fear of motor vehicles, which they now know contain only interested eco-tourists, who mean them no harm. They no longer run off at the sound of an engine.
Once, thousands of these pale-coloured asses roamed the desolate wastes from the Negev in Israel and much of the Middle East, stretching all the way to the Little Rann of Kutch. They could not outrun modern firearms and vehicles like they could horsemen with lances or bows and arrows, however, and they were hunted over huge stretches of territory in just a few years after firearms were introduced. Although not hunted much on the Rann plains, they were reduced to just a few hundred animals in the 1950s and 1960s by various diseases, including the dreaded South African horse sickness.
With strict protection and recovery from disease, they have slowly multiplied over the years in the Indian state of Gujarat and now occur in the thousands once more. It’s pleasing to see several foals close to their mothers in most herds. Away from Gujarat, few people are aware of their existence and think you are referring to some kind of feral donkey rather than a noble, elegant wild beast. Wild asses received mention in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible in several passages, including one where God referred to them in a discussion with Job, the hermit prophet in the wilderness, as a symbol of freedom and independence.
The Little Rann of Kutch is also being more and more appreciated by both foreign travellers and a growing number of middle-class Indians for the huge numbers of waterbirds that may arrive over winter. This will occur if the monsoon rains have been sufficient to form large enough expanses of shallow lakes for them to feed and rest in. The most obvious birds, often seen in large numbers, are flamingos, pelicans, cranes, avocets, stilts, and various kinds of migratory waders. Both greater and lesser flamingos occur, often in mixed flocks. Sometimes, the mirror-smooth waters seem to stretch from horizon to horizon and the scattered flamingo flocks cover the whole expanse, with a clear blue sky above, creating a stunning effect. Photographers often arrive just on dawn or wait for the sun to set over the waters to ensure the most picturesque images can be taken.
On dusk, too, it’s worth waiting around in the silence, not just to watch as the sun’s bright red globe slips like a lowering Japanese flag over the horizon, but to observe the large flocks of cranes gliding in to spend the night standing in the lake. They break the evening silence with their bugling call notes. In contrast, the much bulkier pelican flocks will suddenly appear cruising overhead, seemingly out of nowhere. Like huge, lumbering Sunderland flying boats, they lose height in curving, twisting formation to silently land near the noisy cranes and settle down for the night. They are still visible as massed ranks of whiteness even in the fading light. Equally beautiful to watch are the large flocks of pied avocets, elegant black and white wading birds with their ebony caps, bluish legs and slim, upturned bills, like cobblers’ awls. Last but not least to merit mention are the flocks of black-winged stilts. They are usually to be found close to the water’s edge calling their yapping notes like distant sled dogs. They move in small bands from one part of the shallows to another. Like the avocet, they too are pied with jet black backs and white undersides and heads. Their slim, elegant forms are accentuated by their needle-thin bills and their ridiculously long legs, which are pale pink.
It would be a difficult task to find a collection of birds anywhere so easy to observe, so different in size and form, yet so spectacularly stunning in their different ways. May they long continue to thrive in this special place, where the forlorn and barren can be transformed in no time into one of the greatest ornithological sights on the planet.
The Little Rann of Kutch reminds us that even the most barren landscapes can be full of life and beauty when given the chance to thrive.
You too can help secure a future for wildlife and wild places. Please consider including a gift in your Will to WWF just like David has.