Findings from various reports, articles, and literature related to wetlands globally highlight a very concerning trend. Human activity is the main cause of widespread degradation of wetland ecosystems. The particular focus of this study is the East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW) in West Bengal, India, currently recognized as a Ramsar site. These wetlands along the eastern part of Kolkata city are facing threats to their existence, and were largely destroyed by the expansion of the city of Kolkata during the colonial and post-colonial eras. This has become more serious owing to the expansion and development of sewage outlets. The primary objective of this study is to understand the evolving status of the EKW. To achieve this, a variety of resources have been used, such as Major J. Rennell’s map 1765–1767, Survey of India topographic maps spanning 1922 to 1972, contemporary accounts, and satellite imagery such as Landsat (1980–2024) and Sentinel 2A (2019). By using indices such as the Modified Normalized Difference Water Index, Normalized Difference Aquatic Vegetation Index, and machine-learning-based image classification, the objective of obtaining spatio-temporal information about the EKW has been accomplished.