The searing heat and inhospitality of the desert belies its remarkable ability to harvest nature's resources in the most creative and efficient manner imaginable. Adaptability and survival are inextricably linked in this austere wonderland, where water conservation methods of the most imaginative kind are permanently on display. Animals that never drink and plant seeds that can stay alive for years without water are typical of the miracles of this most fragile zone. It is said that deserts are the fastest growing habitats on the planet, spurred on by man's incredible ability to defoliate the Earth. In the Indian subcontinent, deserts, with an area of about 225,000 sq. km. account for just under seven percent of the total land area. Better known as the Great Indian Desert, this arid, extreme habitat spreads over western Rajasthan and the Great Rann of Kutchh in Gujarat.

Biology of the Indian desert

The Indian Desert Zone has been divided into two distinct sub-divisions. One is the larger Thar desert region which covers 180,000 sq. kms. in the state of Rajasthan. This is the most densely populated desert in the world. The other is the Rann of Kutchh, covering some 45,000 sq. kms. of western Gujarat. The Thar, bio-geographically, is the eastern edge of the immense Sahara-Arabian desert zone that extends from the North African Sahara through Iran, Afghanistan and Baluchistan and eastwards to the Indo-Pakistan border. The Thar receives more rainfall than the Arabian desert sprawl. However, much of this precipitation is seasonal and has resulted in the emergence of some interesting plant communities, the eastern parts of the desert having markedly less desert-like flora. Contrary to what is believed, the Thar is not all sand dune. There are isolated patches of undulating, scrub-covered hills, reaching elevations of up to 300 metres and more. Internal vegetal variation is common, affected directly by the availability of moisture.

The desert system is characterised not so much by the variety and numbers of animal species but by the adaptations exhibited to tackle the rigours of desert life. The Thar shows a good extent of endemism in its faunal structure. The desert cat, desert fox, the winter-visiting houbara bustard and several sandgrouse species, as also a few reptiles are found only in the Thar. Blackbuck, chinkara, the Indian wolf, caracal, great Indian bustard can also be seen here.

Ecological realities are only now dawning on us and owing to our past follies, in its northern and western extremities, much of the Thar has been severely modified by man. On the face of it, for instance, bringing water to the desert may still sound like a good idea to many. However, intense irrigation through a system of canals running from Punjab having raised moisture availability and thereby bringing a greater area under cultivation, has resulted in severe salinity and the invasion of exotic plants and animals into the desert. Prosopis juliflora is the best example of an exotic that has spread almost all over the Thar and its periphery, at the cost of diverse local plants.

In contrast to the sandy Thar, the Rann of Kutchh portion of the Indian desert is primarily composed of salt flats, flanked by extensive grasslands and thom scrub, gradually merging southwards into the cultivated Kathiawar peninsula of Gujarat. Both, the Little and the Great Ranns, with very similar vegetation communities, have been grouped together under the Rann of Kutchh sub-division of the Indian desert Zone. Every monsoon, the Ranns are prone to flooding by brackish or saline water (from the sea). The plant community is quite interesting in that plants have adapted to a saline-marshy environment. Such bush-plants are known as halophytes. Though the Ranns are predominantly flatlands, they are interspersed with raised mounds or islands, locally called bets. Many of these bets escape the floods and we see animals taking shelter on these islands. Some of the hilly mounds reach an altitude of 300 metres. Both the Ranns have unique faunal communities. The Great Rann is best known for its huge breeding colony of lesser flamingoes, as also a host of other ground-nesting birds that breed here and perhaps nowhere else in the Indian region. The Little Rann is the only home of the wild ass in the Indian peninsula, besides playing host to a fair number of houbara bustards, sandgrouse and other avifauna.

Conservation status

Three large protected areas have been declared in the Indian Desert Zone. Two of these are in the Rann of Kutchh while the Desert National Park is located in the Thar. The two reserves in the Rann are the Wild Ass Sanctuary (4,950 sq. km.) and Narayan Sarovar Sanctuary (765 sq. km.), totally accounting for 12.7 per cent of the total area of the Rann. Thus the Rann of Kutchh has the maximum extent of protected areas in the subcontinent. The Desert National Park spreads over 3,162 sq. km. of the Thar. Also there are two tiny protected areas in the Thar -- Tal Chapper and Gajner, of seven and 10 sq. km. respectively. Additionally, the Thar has 14 special closed areas, called enclosures, totalling nearly 3,500 sq. km. Most of these are in the Jodhpur region, in the vicinity of villages and are areas of scrub, much influenced by livestock grazing as also sparse cultivation. However, the people are traditionally tolerant towards the wildlife which includes blackbuck, chinkara, bustard, jackal, and the occasional wolf and caracal. These enclosures have not been included in the protected areas for the desert zone.

Clear policy decisions, wise management and rational assessments are critical to conservation success. It can be seen that under the present sweep, the plant and animal communities of the Indian Desert Zone seem to be reasonably well protected. It is further proposed, however, that a network of small ecological units be developed for the zone. Merely having large, but poorly protected, areas is, after all, hardly advisable. The proposed increase in the overall number of protected areas of this zone is, nevertheless, four-fold -- from 5 to 20 whereas the total area actually decreases by about 400 sq. km. This is because of the suggested denotification of an extensively disturbed portion of the Wild Ass Sanctuary in the little Rann of Kutchh.