Birds on Majuli Island. PTI file picture

New Delhi, March 27: The National Board for Wildlife has decided to nominate the Brahmaputra Valley ecosystem in Assam for classification as a Unesco world heritage site for 2007.

At a meeting last week, chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, other biodiversity hotspots were also shortlisted for nomination between 2005 and 2010 for their natural heritage.

These include the Silent Valley Cluster in Kerala (2005), the Lonar Crater in Maharashtra (2006), the Western Ghats Cluster (2008), the Great Himalayan National Park (2009) and the Girnar Forests, Gir National Park and Gir Sanctuary in Gujarat (2010). Last week?s meeting had been called to discuss the alarming decrease in the number of tigers in the country?s national parks.

The Brahmaputra ecosystem area that would be nominated as the heritage site will also include the river?s flood plains.

Majuli Island on the Brahmaputra Valley has been nominated as a Unesco world heritage site for 2005. It is the largest riverine island in the world and is under ecological threat because of land erosion.

The island was visited by Sankardeb, a 15th century reformer. Sixty-nine important monasteries of the Vaishnava faith, called satras, still exist and have a wide following in the local community and all over Assam. The satras also house old Vaishnava manuscripts. The island, the first site in the Northeast to be nominated for world heritage conservation, also has a unique tradition of crafts and organic farming.

However, all this is under threat because of indiscriminate development in towns along the Brahmaputra?s banks. Large embankments have been built to protect the towns from floods and the backlash of the current from the embankments relentlessly lashes the island leading to rapid land erosion.

The river basin is the habitat of exquisite flora and fauna, including many rare, endangered species like the Indian one-horned rhinoceros, clouded leopard and the hoolock gibbon. The flood plains are also dotted with wetlands or beels, which function as floodwater retention basins.

Given the seismic nature of the region and reports that warn of Himalayan glaciers melting faster than any in the world, there could be increased water flow in rivers of the Brahmaputra basin in summer. This also puts the river?s ecosystem under threat.