Point Calimere Flamingo Wetland Nagapattinam Tamil Nadu

Point Calimere (Kodikkarai) Wildlife Sanctuary at the southern tip of the Cauvery Delta in Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu is India's most significant flamingo congregation point and a critical staging area for migratory waterbirds on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, with up to 30,000 flamingos (both Greater and Lesser flamingo species) gathered in the saline pans and tidal lagoons of the sanctuary during the winter migration season from November to March. The sanctuary's saline wetland habitat, maintained by the dry flat coast and seasonal evaporation of shallow coastal pans, is unusual in the eastern Indian coastal landscape where mangrove and creek habitats are more common. Blackbuck herds of over two thousand have recovered at Point Calimere after protection, making it one of the few coastal blackbuck populations in India. The surrounding Vedaranyam salt pan complex is historically important as the site of the Vedaranyam March of April 1930, when C. Rajagopalachari led the Tamil Nadu counterpart to Gandhi's Dandi March, with salt pan workers and fishing communities as primary participants. Traditional estuary fishing communities (Paraiyar and Pattanavar) have ecological knowledge of seasonal fish migration patterns in the Cauvery delta estuaries adjacent to the sanctuary.