In December 2024, a survey team trekked more than 16 km through the Kamlang Tiger Reserve and Wildlife Sanctuary to reach Glaw Lake, tucked 1,168 metres above sea level in the Eastern Himalayas.

Fed by mountain streams and surrounded by thick vegetation, the freshwater lake is also regarded as sacred by the Mishmi community.

Less than two years later, on 3 August 2026, Glaw Lake became India’s 101st Ramsar Site and Arunachal Pradesh’s first Wetland of International Importance. India’s Ramsar network had grown from 26 sites in 2014 to 101 in 2026.

You may have seen announcements like this before: a lake or wetland receives a Ramsar tag, India’s count goes up by one, and the designation is celebrated as a conservation milestone.

But what exactly has the wetland gained?

What does it take to qualify for the tag? What changes after it receives one? And what happens to all the wetlands that may never make it onto the list?

To answer that, it helps to first understand what a Ramsar Site actually is.

So, what does ‘Ramsar’ actually mean?

The name comes from Ramsar, a city in Iran, where the Ramsar Convention, formally known as the Convention on Wetlands, was adopted in 1971. India became a Contracting Party on 1 February 1982.

The Convention provides a framework for the conservation and “wise use” of wetlands and their resources.

For a wetland to make it onto the Ramsar List, it must meet at least one of nine criteria relating to ecological, botanical, zoological, limnological or hydrological importance.

That may sound technical. In simpler terms, a wetland can qualify because it is a rare or unique type, because it supports threatened species, or because large populations of wetland-dependent animals rely on it.

But calling a wetland important is only the beginning. That importance has to be documented.

The country proposing the site has to define its boundaries and record its ecological character through a Ramsar Information Sheet.

That means answering some very practical questions. Where does the wetland begin and end? Which species depend on it? How does water move through it? What makes the site ecologically important? And what needs to remain intact for the wetland to continue functioning as it does?

Answering those questions takes scientific information, mapping, monitoring and management.

Now that we know what Ramsar looks for, Glaw Lake gives us a useful example of what that process looks like on the ground.

Why did Glaw Lake make it onto the Ramsar List?

Glaw Lake lies within the Kamlang Tiger Reserve and Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh.

More than 150 tree species and 49 orchid species have been recorded within the wetland and its catchment. The wider Kamlang landscape supports tiger, leopard, clouded leopard and snow leopard, while the lake provides habitat for water-dependent species, including the critically endangered white-bellied heron.

But a list of species tells us only one part of why a wetland matters.

On 18 and 19 December 2024, a team from Wetlands International South Asia, accompanied by members of the Kamlang Tiger Reserve and Wildlife Sanctuary Forest Department, carried out a scoping survey of the lake.

After trekking more than 16 km through rugged terrain, the team documented its ecological, hydrological and socio-economic characteristics.

They were looking at the lake as a whole: its biodiversity, its water systems, the........

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