Loktak Lake’s phumdi islands face a slow death — and a bold plan to save them
The floating phumdi that shelter the sangai deer are thinning. Scientists and fishers are arguing over the cause.
On Loktak Lake, the great floating islands of vegetation called phumdi have thinned dramatically in a decade, threatening the habitat of the sangai, the brow-antlered deer found nowhere else on earth.
Fishers blame the Ithai Barrage, built in the 1980s to feed a hydropower plant, for holding the water level steady and starving the phumdi of their seasonal rhythm. Scientists largely agree, though a rehabilitation debate over the lake’s fishing families remains unresolved.
A pilot project is experimenting with anchored ‘nursery phumdi’ — grown away from the open lake — with early signs of regrowth.