India has an enormous bounding coastline and vast stretches of estuaries and backwaters. Indian estuarine waters have number of classic research records, most of which are historically important. Estuaries provide critical habitat for species that are valued commercially, recreationally and culturally. Birds, fishes, amphibians, insects and other wildlife depend on estuaries to live, feed, nest and reproduce. Estuaries provide essential food, shelter, migratory corridors and breeding ground for many aquatic organisms and also livelihood for many fisherfolks. Many of these aquatic resources are poorly conserved and this has led to the loss of biodiversity. The health status and biological diversity of the Indian estuarine system are deteriorating day by day through multi various man-made activities including dumping of enormous quantities of sewage and effluents into the estuary. This has drastically reduced the population of the fishes, also caused considerable ecological imbalance and resulted in large-scale disappearance of flora and fauna. However, the belated development of estuarine biodiversity as a field of systematic research has been the outcome of growing concern about immense societal importance of these ecosystems. Due to obvious reasons, the estuaries need to draw focused attention on the issues like status evaluation and stress quantification of the individual system for conservation and protection against further deterioration in future. Cleaning up of the badly affected Indian estuaries and bringing them back to health will also need a legal framework to ensure that management plans are implemented to produce desired results. Hence, it will require suitable legislation which in turn will need public awareness of the problems that our estuaries are experiencing today. The present study on various aspects of biodiversity in estuaries at varied geographical regions of India provide detailed historical baselines and quantitative targets for ecosystem-based management and estuary conservation.
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