Lal Suhanra

Lal Suhanra National Park was established in 1972 in the Bahawalpur district, in the Pakistani province of Punjab, on the north-western edge of the Cholistan desert. In 1977 it was designated a biosphere reserve under UNESCO's MAB programme, Pakistan's first.

The landscape is flat and arid, dotted with dunes that can cover up to a thousand hectares and reach four metres in height, some of them still mobile. It combines three very different environments: subtropical thorn forest with Prosopis cineraria and Capparis decidua, irrigated plantations of acacia and eucalypt, and wetland, around Lake Patisar, of some 1,935 hectares, built originally as a reservoir and later turned into a wintering ground for waterbirds.

The territory is crossed by the dry bed of the Hakra River, identified with the Ghaggar-Hakra that is linked to the ancient Sarasvati of the Vedic texts, and archaeological remains of a vanished civilisation have been found along its banks. Some six thousand people live within the reserve, largely maintaining a nomadic way of life. The park hosts a blackbuck recovery programme and holds more than a hundred and sixty bird species, among them the houbara bustard.