Besides causing sweeping damages to crops, houses, bridges, schools, healthcare facilities, heritage sites and government buildings in five districts of lower Sindh, the recent catastrophic monsoon in the past two fortnights has started taking its toll on wildlife species.
In different villages of Tharparkar district – the hub of deer and most precious wildlife species of peafowl – 16 peacocks have been reported dead so far due to rainwater inundation, collapsing houses and hunger.
The peafowl population is already on the verge of extinction due to climate changes, decreasing water sources, droughts, poaching, unavailability of food and increasing forest-cutting in Thar Desert.
Monsoon is supposed to be the breeding season of peafowl, but the monsoon this year has brought in its wake only death for the peafowl population in Thar Desert that is already decreasing rapidly.
The monsoon-swollen Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD) built by the Water and Power Development Authority burst its banks and almost submerged the entire Badin district and portions of Tharparkar district.
According to the locals, the LBOD breaches flooded several villages in two union councils of Tharparkar, namely Bhitaro and Kaloi.
After the LBOD breaches inundated the villages along the borders of Thar Desert and the barrage area, including Goth Tal Diplo in Kaloi and the Sultan Khoso village in Bhitaro, almost all the population moved out of these villages and started living on the nearby sand mounds.
However, despite several attempts by the villagers, they were unable to move the peafowl population to safety.
These villages are supposed to be the hub of the peafowl population, and according to independent estimation, there are around 70 peafowl in Goth Tal Diplo and the Sultan Khoso village.
Elderly Ghulam Haider Khoso, a resident of the Sultan Khoso village was one of the victims of the rains and the LBOD floods.
His mother had kept a peacock as a pet, and her last wish before her death was that her pet be provided proper care.
However, when the rains inundated the village, Khoso attempted to rescue the bird out of the village, but he failed to do so, and the peacock died after it failed to find any food to survive.
“When we reached Khoso’s village,” said Association for Water, Applied Education & Renewable Energy (AWARE) Umerkot Programme Officer Jan Muhammad Samoon, “we found him sitting over the debris of his house, which was submerged due to the floodwater from the LBOD, and crying like a child. He had no sorrow for his house and the entire village, but for the death of his peacock.”
A team of AWARE volunteers was visiting the village for relief work and discovered the dead peacocks.
“It’s breeding season for the peafowl, but I fear that this year the rains have brought death and, unfortunately, the Sindh Wildlife Department has yet to initiate rescue of this precious wildlife species,” Samoon said.