Perumbakkam Wetland (Waterbodies of Chennai - 52)

Perumbakkam Wetland - this is the home for about 130 species of birds, and on average, 40,000 birds flock to this site every month. It feels great, right? Hold on! Not even 10 percent of the birds visited the site regularly a few decades ago.

Perumbakkam Wetland, which is often referred to as Sholinganallur Wetland, was originally part of Pallikkaranai Marshland. The urbanization, poor town planning, and the greed of real estate sharks have separated both these wetlands miles apart now.

What we see today is not a wetland but a remnant of the lost glory. Thousands of houses, one famous hospital, a college, a girls' hostel, a few hotels, and many IT companies have made this site their own long back. It's a kind of encroachment that was done legally.

Happy travelling.

Note: As per a report, there were about 650+ waterbodies in the Chennai region till the 1980s. Today, only a fraction of them exist. And most of those surviving waterbodies hardly have water, and even some of them that have water have been poorly shrunk. In Chennai, there are tank roads without tanks nearby and lake-view roads without lakes. There is a high possibility that even the few waterbodies we have today might vanish soon. I decided to visit the currently surviving waterbodies of Chennai and its suburbs and write about them in my blog as a series.