‘Even the animals seem confused’: a retreating Kashmir glacier is creating an entire new world in its wake. Kolahoi is one of many glaciers whose decline is disrupting whole ecosystems – water, wildlife and human life that it has supported for centuries. Guardian Sajid Raina Tauseef Ahma in Srinagar 10 Dec 2025 From the slopes above Pahalgam, the Kolahoi glacier is visible as a thinning, rumpled ribbon of ice stretching across the western Himalayas. Once a vast white artery feeding rivers, fields and forests, it is now retreating steadily, leaving bare rock, crevassed ice and newly exposed alpine meadows. The glacier’s meltwater has sustained paddy fields, apple orchards, saffron fields and grazing pastures for centuries. Now, as its ice diminishes, the entire web of life it supported is shifting. Alpine flowers bloom earlier, confusing pollinators. Musk deer and ibex lose grazing grounds, and snow leopards are increasingly spotted near villages as they run out of food to hunt. For scientists, Kolahoi represents one of the most dramatic ecological changes in the region. Shepherds report shrinking grasslands and shifting streams that affect livestock. “Even the animals seem confused by the changing landscape,” says Mohammad Siraj Khan, a 55-year-old shepherd. 'We couldn’t irrigate even half the crop. This didn’t happen even during the worst years of the 1990s' Abdul Gani Dar, farmer                                                                                  

Historical records show that Kolahoi has been shrinking since the mid-19th century. A 2020 satellite assessment found it had lost almost a quarter of its area over nearly six decades, while its snout had retreated about 900 meters since 1978. Between 1980 and 2018, agricultural land in the glacier’s Lidder watershed fell by almost 40%, reflecting the direct link between glacial retreat and water availability. “This glacier is the lifeline of the Lidder and Sind rivers,” says researcher Labeeb Gulzar. “Its loss could reshape the future of Kashmir’s water, agriculture and ecosystems.”The shifts are transforming landscapes and communities across the region, says Dr Talib Bashir Bhat, a research scholar at Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir (Skuast). “Changes in glacier melt and snowline elevation alter river flows, affecting irrigation, orchards and pastures, linking the glacier directly to biodiversity and livelihoods.” He says alpine plants face changes as lower-elevation species move into newly exposed land, altering the delicate balance of ecosystems.

Rising temperatures and pollution from vehicles, wood burning and construction all darken the ice, accelerating its melt. Deforestation and growing tourist infrastructure in the upper catchment have worsened the problem. For local farmers, the changes are tangible. “The canal dried up by late June, much earlier than usual,” says Abdul Gani Dar, from Pulwama.“We couldn’t irrigate even half the crop. This didn’t happen even during the worst years of the 1990s. Now the snow is gone, and the streams vanish before summer starts.” Scientific observations underline these concerns. Prof Shakil Ahmad Romshoo, vice-chancellor of the Islamic University of Science and Technology, says Kolahoi’s mass balance is highly sensitive to temperature. “For every 1C rise, it loses about 0.65 metres of ice thickness annually,” he said........ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/10/kashmir-glacier-ecosystems-snow-kolahoi-biodiversity-agriculture-aoe                                                                                                                   

AND........‘Like walking through time’: as glaciers retreat, new worlds are being created in their wake.Guardian Katherine Hill 13 Sept 2025 rom the slopes behind the village of Ernen, it is possible to see the gouge where the Fiesch glacier once tumbled towards the valley in the Bernese Alps. The curved finger of ice, rumpled like tissue, cuts between high buttresses of granite and gneiss. Now it has melted out of sight. People here once feared the monstrous ice streams, describing them as devils, but now they dread their disappearance. Like other glaciers in the Alps and globally, the Fiesch is melting at ever-increasing rates. More than ice is lost when the giants disappear: cultures, societies and entire ecosystems are braided around the glaciers.

The neighbouring Great Aletsch, like the Fiesch, flows from the high plateau between the peaks of the Jungfrau-Aletsch, a Unesco region in the Swiss canton of Valais and Europe’s longest glacier. It is receding at a rate of more than 50 metres a year, but from the cable car above it remains a mighty sight. Clouds scud across the sky and shafts of light marble the ice. On the rocky slopes leading down to the glacier from the ridge, there are pools of aquamarine brilliance, the ground speckled with startling alpine flowers. The ice feels alive, with waterfalls plunging into deep crevasses and rocks shimmering in the sun. “It’s just so diverse, these harsh mountains and ice, and up the ridge, a totally different habitat,” says Maurus Bamert, director of the environmental education centre Pro Natura Aletsch. “This is really special.” Participants now pray for the glacier not to vanish, but they once prayed for it to retreat and stop swallowing their meadows

Many of the living worlds in the ice and snow are not visible to the human eye. “You don’t expect a living organism on the ice,” Bamert says. But there is a rich ice-loving biotic community and surprising biodiversity that thrives in this frozen landscape. Springtails or “glacier fleas” survive on the snow’s crust – this year alone, five new species were identified in the European Alps. But there are also algae, bacteria, fungi and ice worms, as well as spiders and beetles, which feed on springtails. As ice melts, this landscape and its inhabitants, human and non-human, are all affected. Along the glacier’s path, ice turns to water and the rushing sound of the river becomes audible. In 1859, at the greatest extent of its thickness, the glacier reached 200 metres higher than it does now. The landscape revealed by the melt is mostly bare rock, riven with fissures that spill across the hillside. Jasmine Noti from Aletsch Arena, the regional tourism organisation, says these widen each year, new cracks appear and routes are redesigned. The ice acts like a massive buttress, gluing the hillside together, and as it melts, slippage and instability increase.

As the edges of the glacial valley descend into the cool cover of the Aletschwald forest, “it’s like walking through time”, says Bamert. On the higher slopes, older pines dominate, but lower down the trees thin, and the pioneer species of larch and birch cover the hillside: early signs of newer postglacial reforestation. It only takes about five to 10 years for plants to colonise the land. Further down yellow saxifrage and mountain sorrel cling to the rocks. All this was once under ice sheets, but the succession of growth tells a story of glacial retreat, historic and recent.....[ed and if the warming continues alpine environments will transform into the forests below......read on   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/13/switzerland-alps-fiesch-aletsch-glaciers-retreat-ecosystems-mountains-culture-aoe

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