Srinagar: The government has restricted access to Kashmir’s high altitude reaches in recent months, affecting not just thrill-seeking tourists but a great many scientists who visit the region to research glaciers, water resources, alpine ecosystems and communities that inhabit its mountain pastures. The closure of high altitude routes, done citing “security reasons”, and the repeated denial of permissions by the police and the civil administration, has brought critical fieldwork to a halt for researchers in Kashmir.Fieldwork meant to track disaster risks related to climate change are especially disrupted by the new restrictions. Researchers The Wire spoke to warn that it could sabotage scientific observations of the fragile Himalayan ecosystem, where changes are tracked both over long- and short-term periods.Earth science researchers in Jammu and Kashmir say they are no longer able to collect samples from critical sites. Nor can they verify the remote-sensing data they have already collected, nor can they physically monitor developments in environmentally vulnerable zones.One of the biggest stumbling blocks they complain about is the tiring permission process involving the civil administration, district magistrates, the Forest Department, police and army – all of which ultimately leads them to a dead end.Researchers acknowledge that security considerations may necessitate restrictions in particular areas. All they seek is a predictable pattern to permissions, so that their research work can continue.“We aren’t asking them to compromise security for our research, we just want them to allow us to visit the sites we have been studying for years. A small gap in our research can invalidate our years of hard work,” said a researcher from the School of Earth Sciences at University of Kashmir.Researchers across universities The Wire spoke to requested anonymity to avoid potential consequences for speaking on the issue. They also requested using the broader term of “earth sciences” instead of identifying their specific departments within universities.The professors and project guides whom The Wire contacted also avoided speaking about these restrictions.Also read: People in the Mountains Need Disaster Justice, Not Sermons on EnvironmentalismAs The Wire previously reported, the restricted zones include the Kashmir Great Lakes area (also a popular trekking route), Tarsar-Marsar and the Pir Panjal Lakes region, including Tosamaidan Meadow (though it was recently re-opened for visitors), Kousarnag and parts of Gurez Valley.The closed sites are spread across Kulgam, Ganderbal, Srinagar, Budgam, Kupwara, Anantnag and Baramulla districts. Many are popular routes, alpine meadows, waterfalls and high-altitude lakes that also attract adventure tourists while also serving as crucial spots for researchers.These sub-regions include many that are increasingly exposed to the risks of Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs), landslides and flash floods.Alpine meadow in Kashmir, August 14, 2023. Credit: Rohit Sharma, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.Shadow of Pahalgam over research workThe prohibitory orders cite “serious security concerns” and threats to public safety as reasons for the closure. A similar order was issued in July, when the government issued an updated list of 28 locations that visitors could travel to. In several cases, orders were issued under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) by district collectors and sub-divisional magistrates, pointing towards incidents where people had attempted to cross military and police checkpoints during late-night hours without proper permissions.Section 163 gives executive magistrates the power to issue urgent orders to prevent nuisance or apprehended danger. However, researchers say the restrictions, and the process through which they are enforced, have made legitimate scientific fieldwork difficult to undertake.“Since the Pahalgam attack, it has become routine. The civil and police administration make us move from pillar to post to get permission and then deny it after making us wait for weeks. Sometimes, they do not even respond to our letters,” a senior researcher at University of Kashmir told The Wire.Another researcher, whose work includes studying glaciers, said, “In the last two years, we have repeatedly applied for permission through dozens of letters, and we have not got it. Every time we approach the civil administration, they refer us to the police and the cycle repeats without the permission materialising,” he said.The restrictions were strictly enforced after the April 2025 Pahalgam attack, in which 26 people, including 25 tourists and a local pony handler, were killed. The killings triggered a military confrontation between India and Pakistan, almost bringing them to the brink of war.While government agencies have invoked security concerns to justify the closure of “sensitive areas”, researchers say the absence of a predictable clearance mechanism has left them clueless about when, or whether, they will be able to resume their field work required for their projects.The strict security lockdowns and internet and communication shutdowns in August 2019 also disrupted critical time-sensitive field sampling, transmission, monitoring of real-time data from remote fields and remote data downloads.Also read: That Elusive Thing Called the Ecology of the Gaze“The 2019 Himalayan Alpine Dynamics Research Initiative [HIMADRI] alpine monitoring project near Gulmarg is a clear example of how security and communication restrictions created unfillable data gaps that reduced the precision of multi-year studies,” Vimal Khawas, professor at the Special Centre for the Study of Northeast India in Jawaharlal Nehru University told The Wire.That year, researchers were unable to access the HIMADRI site at Gulmarg, which disrupted the data continuity.HIMDARI is a crucial long-term ecological monitoring project designed to track the impacts of climate change on high-altitude vegetation gradients in Kashmir.Khawas, whose work focuses on environmental challenges, hydropower development and their intersections with glacial lakes and climate change in the Eastern Himalaya, specifically in the Sikkim and Darjeeling Himalaya, said that the security-driven closures of high-altitude areas in Kashmir or any other parts of the Himalaya limit field access for earth science research.Flash floods triggered by a cloudburst swept the Chatroo area, causing widespread damage, in Kishtwar district, Jammu and Kashmir, August 1, 2026. Photo: PTI.Researchers in environmental science, geology and related disciplines at universities across Kashmir also told The Wire that their projects had stagnated after the restrictions.“We do not know when we will be allowed to continue our research. We do not know what is happening in the high altitudes,” said the senior researcher from University of Kashmir.One project that the glacier scientist has been researching could not be validated simply because he cannot visit the site, which is now deemed a restricted area. “It’s not just my project – I know many people facing the same problems, who have started using different methods to finish their research. Those methods won’t bear the perfect results,” this researcher, also from University of Kashmir, told The Wire.Fieldwork is essential to assess climate risksField work is not an “optional” aspect of scientists’ research work. It is often essential to establish the accuracy of their findings derived from satellite imagery, historical records or computer-based models, said a fourth researcher, who specialises in remote sensing-based analysis.Researchers at University of Kashmir who study rivers, glaciers, minerals, lakes and aquatic life, for example, require samples from source points. They examine the relationship between surface water, geology and underground aquifers. Researchers monitoring glaciers and glacial lakes must also access specific locations to record changes and compare observations over time, researchers said.But the ‘authority letters’ regularly issued to the university’s researchers no longer seem to work. They now need additional clearances from the concerned departments of government, which have become a virtually insurmountable hurdle.“We are unable to collect samples from the headwaters, the water sources. So how can we understand its hydrogeology,” said one researcher. He urged university authorities to negotiate with the administration on the concerns of scholars, since their university-level permits no longer help them reach field sites.“If the Vice Chancellor takes up the issue with the Chancellor [the Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir] it can be resolved,” said this researcher.Also read: ‘We Are Being Treated As If We Are Standing With Guns’: Do Restrictions Ensure Security in Kashmir?Several researchers told this reporter that they informed their research guides they could not secure permission but they couldn’t help.The Wire attempted to contact the Vice-Chancellor’s secretariat about the measures taken by the university to address the issue on the phone number listed on its official website, but it was found to be out of service. This story will be updated when a response is received.When you deny access, at least tell us whySome researchers said they had no clarity about why the permission was being refused to them. They alleged that officials often responded that access was “not allowed”, without providing an explanation or telling them whether the denial was temporary, location-specific or linked to a particular security assessment.Many researchers said that in high-altitude areas, access is often possible only during specific periods. Therefore, delays of several weeks can impact an entire research season.“Broken data will not help produce reliable results. These security restrictions are creating a gap in research, and it will be difficult to bridge this gap in the future. This will have a significant impact on future studies. Research based on incomplete data risks losing its authenticity and credibility, as partial findings may not provide a complete or accurate picture. Such results will be difficult to verify and rely upon,” environmentalist Aijaz Rasool told The Wire.For students pursuing postgraduate and doctoral degrees, the delays have added to their struggle to meet deadlines for field-dependent projects. “Due to delayed thesis submission, our degree gets extended, funding deadlines come closer or the risk of not completing a degree on time becomes really troubling for us,” said one researcher.Risky missions for dataThe consequences of the restrictions, researchers said, have extended to the personal safety of some who have tried entering the restricted zones without proper permission following repeated denials by the police and civil administration. One researcher alleged that army personnel assaulted him and his colleagues while they were returning from a field visit to a research site in Gulmarg.The researcher said they had accessed the restricted high-altitude area to conduct their fieldwork without permission after repeated denials of permission from the police and civil administration. The Wire couldn’t verify the allegation independently.Another researcher from University of Kashmir alleged that he and his guide were detained by police for about half an hour while returning from a high-altitude location in the Gulmarg area. “They frisked us and kept asking why we visited the high altitude without permission,” he said. They had to phone a personal connection who helped them avoid more trouble.But in most cases, the researchers and scientists have abandoned their plans to visit, even if the fieldwork is essential to completing their research.Vulnerability of Himalaya ranges to climate disasterIn the wake of devastating flash floods in Nepal, which caused extensive loss of life and property, experts in Jammu and Kashmir have called for stronger disaster preparedness and strategic planning to address risks associated with changing climatic patterns.Jammu and Kashmir has witnessed at least 35 cloudburst incidents this year so far, claiming around 31 lives and causing widespread destruction. But in Kashmir, the vulnerable glaciers, glacial lakes, water resources and alpine ecosystems are out of reach for those who can study these changes.A recent study of 155 glacial lakes in the Union Territory, conducted by researchers from the University of Kashmir and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune categorised five as having “very high GLOF susceptibility”. These are Bramsar, Chirsar, Nundkol, Gangabal and Bhagsar lakes located in the higher reaches of Ganderbal, Kulgam, Kishtwar and Doda.Gangabal Lake, August 12, 2018, Credit: Seyed Sajed Rizvi, Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons“Yes, we have several such lakes in Srinagar and across the Kashmir region, including Kausar Lake and Gangabal Lake in the upper reaches. We also have lakes such as Sheshnag and Gangabal, which are relatively close to the Srinagar and Kashmir areas. In addition, there are numerous high-altitude mountain lakes across the Himalayas. The kind of catastrophe that occurred in Nepal could potentially happen here as well,” said Rasool.Also read: Natural Disasters See No Borders: A Lesson for the Himalayan CountriesFor researchers working on GLOFs in Kashmir, the government’s restrictions create a particular problem. While satellite imagery can help them identify changes in glacial lakes and surrounding terrain, ground observations are needed to establish whether those changes have been interpreted correctly.This is a critical process, known as ground-truthing, without which researchers will struggle to verify their findings or assess the accuracy of their models.Khawas said that much of the work on glaciers, permafrost, GLOF and other climate work can continue via satellite data, but ground measurements including sensor maintenance, mass-balance work, lake surveys, and remote-sensing calibration are disrupted.Further, alpine climate monitoring relies on uninterrupted seasonal datasets, such as continuous soil temperature logs and annual plant phenology tracking. Externally imposed logistical barriers have created massive “data gaps” for them, making it difficult for researchers to build precise, unbroken multi-year models of climate shifts in the region.The study of 155 glaciers, for instance, had tracked the changes in the ecosystem over a 32-year period.“These zones are critical for long-term monitoring. High-altitude Himalayan areas including Jammu and Kashmir have warmed around 1°C in two decades (faster than lower elevations have warmed), glaciers have lost substantial area, permafrost is widespread, and several lakes carry high GLOF risk to downstream infrastructure. Repeated closures introduce gaps that weaken trend detection and early-warning capacity,” Khawas said.Also read: It’s High Time the Government Took Notice of Kashmir’s Changing ClimateHe pointed out that research projects on climate, environment and weather patterns frequently face multi-layered clearances, from security and forest permissions to district and border-related reviews. These roadblocks often push or research work outside the narrow seasonal windows or force cancellations even when security conditions allow access.“Predictable, permission-based scientific protocols can reduce both security frictions and bureaucratic delays while preserving essential monitoring. Remote sensing helps, but it cannot fully replace consistent field data,” Khawas said.The need for long-term environmental monitoring has become particularly important given the climate change and the developing ‘Super El Niño’. El Niño, a phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), occurs when sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean rise and is associated with changes in rainfall and temperature patterns worldwide.On September 3, the World Meteorological Organisation said that El Niño was firmly established and expected to intensify into a very strong event, with impacts on rainfall and temperature patterns and associated risks of floods, droughts and extreme heat. It said the risks of extreme weather events was “very high” with a “near 100% likelihood” of going into early 2027.Against these changing climate patterns, 188 Indian ecologists issued a ‘Call To Action’ on September 16, urging researchers to strengthen wildlife and ecosystem monitoring. They stressed researchers must continue long-term studies and establish historical baselines to document the impacts of the extreme climate event.In this context, denying or delaying access to field sites can weaken one of the foundations on which reliable assessments of early warning systems depend. “Without getting all the data for analysis, no research is complete. The final results of these studies will be faulty,” said the senior researcher at University of Kashmir.