Q1.
Recently, the phumdis are degenerating and the Sangai deer is listed in the IUCN Red Data list. Habitat loss will significantly affect the Sangai population. Efforts for the conservation of phumdis and the Sangai deer are currently in progress. Provide your suggestions to save habitat and the Sangai deer.
Answer
Save the phumdis first — the deer cannot be saved separately from them. The Sangai is endemic to Manipur and spends most of its time on the floating meadows of Keibul Lamjao National Park in Loktak Lake, so the habitat is the species' life-support system.
Suggestions, grouped by what they act on:
- Restore the water regime of Loktak Lake. The phumdis are floating beds of soil, a few centimetres to two metres thick, whose rooted vegetation must periodically touch the lake bed to take up nutrients. Holding the water permanently high keeps them afloat and starves them, so they thin out. Managing the water level so that it rises and falls as it naturally did is the single most important step.
- Reduce nutrient and silt inflow. Treat sewage and control fertiliser run-off from the catchment, so that the lake does not choke with weeds; plant and protect vegetation on the surrounding slopes to cut the silt load.
- Protect and enlarge the habitat. Enforce the boundary of Keibul Lamjao National Park, stop the cutting and burning of phumdis, and if possible connect additional patches so the population is not confined to one small area — a species restricted to a small area is one accident away from extinction.
- Work with the local community. Fishing families depend on the lake. Provide alternative livelihoods, involve them in monitoring and eco-tourism, and pay for the guarding work — conservation that costs local people their income does not last.
- Monitor the population scientifically. Regular counts, and identification using the deer's own distinguishing characters — the unique hooves and elongated pattern by which naturalists recognised it in 1953 — so that a decline is detected early rather than after the fact.
- Keep a safety population. Maintain a captive-breeding herd in zoos with proper records, so the species cannot be lost entirely to a single flood, disease outbreak or fire.
- Spread awareness. The Sangai is Manipur's state animal and is known as the dancing deer; local pride in it is a real conservation asset.
Why the 1951 story matters: this species was declared extinct in 1951 and rediscovered in 1953 — its characteristic hooves and elongated pattern were what allowed naturalists to identify it. That is classification doing conservation work: you cannot protect what you cannot recognise. It is also a warning — a species can go from "extinct" to "rediscovered" only once.