Recent sightings in Gurez and the Lidder Valley suggest that the Vuder, the Kashmiri otter, still survives in some of the valley’s waters. 

The animal never asked for a perfect Kashmir. It lives on fish, healthy riverbanks, shelter and undisturbed habitat, and it moves along waterways that connect, so its presence gives away a great deal. 

Wherever it lives, those conditions still exist, which makes each sighting a statement about the water as much as about the species. 

Gurez and the Lidder Valley look like fragments of the valley’s original freshwater world, and the Vuder is the evidence that they still function.

The rest of the valley reads differently. Wetlands shrank, natural channels were altered or disconnected, riverbanks lost their vegetation, pollution entered the water and fish habitats degraded. 

The Vuder lost its world through hundreds of small changes, none dramatic enough to alarm anyone, until an animal once familiar became a memory and then the memory began to fade. 

Children who grow up without seeing what their........

© Kashmir Observer