Meghalaya - Ministry of Environment and Forests

7.1.1 Wetland Distribution in West Garo HillsWest Garo Hills is one of the largest districts of Meghalaya located in the western part of the State. The GaroHills district was divided into two districts, viz. the West Garo Hills district and the East Garo Hills district inOctober 1976. The erstwhile West Garo Hills district was further divided into two administrative districts ofWest and South Garo Hills on June 1992. The district headquarters of West Garo Hills is Tura, which is thesecond largest town in the State after Shillong. The West Garo Hills district is bounded by the East Garo Hillsdistrict on the east, the South Garo Hills on the south-east, the Goalpara district of Assam on the north andnorth-west and Bangladesh on the south. The total geographic area of West Garo Hills district of Meghalayais 343890 ha. The wetland area estimated is 7196 ha. Small wetlands, which are less than minimum mapableunits (MMU), are 99 in the district. Details are given in Table 6. The major wetland types are River/Stream,waterlogged areas, Lakes/Ponds and Ox-bow lakes.Sr.No.WettcodeTable 6: Area estimates of wetlands in West Garo HillsWetland CategoryNumberofWetlandsTotalWetlandArea% ofwetlandareaOpen WaterPostmonsoonAreaArea in haPremonsoonArea1100 Inland Wetlands - Natural1 1101 Lakes/Ponds 15 501 6.96 337 1752 1102 Ox-bow lakes/ Cut-off meanders 1 461 6.41 316 1073 1105 Waterlogged 74 1010 14.04 665 2684 1106 River/Stream 61 5083 70.64 5149 50871200 Inland Wetlands -Man-made5 1202 Tanks/Ponds 5 37 0.51 26 326 1203 Waterlogged 1 5 0.07 3 3Sub-Total 157 7097 98.62 6496 5672Wetlands (