Hakaluki Haor (wetland) | lake, marsh

 lake, wetland, marsh

Hakaluki Haor is a marsh wetland ecological system of Eastern Bangladesh in an area bordering Assam, India. It is one of Bangladesh's largest and one of Asia's larger marsh wetland resources. It is famous for sweet water fish. Some 190,000 people live in the surrounding Hakaluki haor area.

Bangladesh is blessed with huge inland open water resources with a wide range of variations in nature- numerous rivers canal, beels, lakes and vast area of floodplains. Altogether the area of this inland water is about 4.5 million hectors. From this, inland open water contains an area of 4.04 hectors including river, beel, canal, haor, baor etc.

The haor is spreaded over Kulaura, Juri and Baralekha upazilla under Moulvibazar district and Fenchuganj and Golapganj upazillas under Sylhet district. The total area of this haor in the rainy season turns into 7000 hectors. Though the haor is surrounded by eleven union and five upazillas, 40% of its territory lies in Barolekha upazilla.

Out of 107 species of fish in the haor a report of IUCN in 2008 represent that only 75 species are remain today. Hakaluki Haor was designated an Ecologically Critical Area (ECA) as the ecosystem is considered to have reached a critical state. It is a protected 'Ramsar' site of international importance for the conservation and sustainable utilization of wetlands.