Kaluveli Lake

Kaluveli, also spelt Kazhuveli, is described as the second-largest brackish lake in South India. It lies in Tindivanam taluk of Villupuram district, Tamil Nadu, some 18 km north of Puducherry, on the coast of the Bay of Bengal beside the East Coast Road, and takes in about 15 villages. Some 196 small irrigation tanks and ponds drain into it.

Kaluveli was once a mangrove forest, but salt pans and overfishing have badly degraded the wetland. It is one of the priority wetlands of Tamil Nadu and one of 94 named under the National Wetland Conservation and Management Programme, alongside Point Calimere and Pallikaranai Marsh, and 47.22 sq km has been declared a protected area. Restoration includes fish-bone channels in the brackish north, where mangroves such as Rhizophora and Avicennia are planted each year, and new plantations on barren ground in the south.