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The Saga Is Dodoesque

India has 78 species of its birds at risk, 13 of them gravely so

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The Saga Is Dodoesque
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Faint Flappings

Of the 78 endangered bird species in India, 13 are at extreme risk.

  • 1) Himalayan Quail—Last seen in 1876
  • 2) Pink-headed Duck—Last seen in 1935
  • 3) White-bellied Heron—less than 250 remaining
  • 4) Egyptian Vulture—less than 1,000 pairs remaining in the subcontinent
  • 5) White-rumped Vulture—declined by 99 per cent, only 11,000 birds left
  • 6) Indian Vulture—with 97 percent decline, only 44,000 birds left
  • 7) Slender-billed Vulture—1,000 left
  • 8) Bengal Florican—280 birds in India
  • 9) Siberian Crane—last pair seen in ’02
  • 10) Sociable Lapwing — 45 birds last seen in Rann of Kutch in Nov 2007
  • 11) Spoon-billed Sandpiper—only 52-249 birds left in the world
  • 12) Jerdon’s Courser—less than 50 left in a corner of Andhra Pradesh
  • 13) Forest Owlet—98 birds last sighted

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Forest Owlet

And there’s certainly no dearth of bad news in this line: blessed with a rich diversity of bird life—nearly 1,200 species and annual host to over 300 migratory birds (in comparison, the US, three times our land size, has only 900 species of birds)—India has managed to squander its heritage through ignorance, lack of funds, indiscriminate hunting and destruction of bird habitats, overgrazing, overpopulated villages and towns encroaching on birds’ natural territory, mindless use of pesticides and chemicals, cutting down grasslands for agriculture. And now a stage has come where experts fear nearly half of our bird species are at risk of disappearing forever if we don’t watch out.

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For instance, of the 13 species that have been declared—euphemistically, some would argue—by the IUCN to be "critically endangered", two are plainly extinct: the Himalayan Quail, once a favourite game bird in Mussoorie and Nainital areas but not sighted since 1876, hunted—like the Dodo—to death; and the Pink-headed Duck, another popular game bird, cursed with good looks, last spotted in Bihar’s Darbhanga in 1935, where it was shot dead by an English hunter. A European living in Calcutta kept a few of these birds in his aviary, and some were even kept in zoos in France and the UK but the birds disappeared after 1945, refusing to breed in captivity.

It’s been touch and go for Jerdon’s Courser as well. One of the world’s rarest birds, Jerdon’s Courser was presumed to be extinct after 1900, until it was miraculously rediscovered in 1986 in a village in Cuddapah district of Andhra Pradesh. So momentous was this rediscovery that the area was soon marked out as a wildlife sanctuary. But despite the hothouse treatment (even the construction of the Telugu Ganga canal had to be diverted because it was intruding too close to the bird’s habitat) there may be less than 50 Jerdon’s Coursers now surviving. Experts say this rare nocturnal bird’s habitat is so specialised—thin, dry thorn scrub jungle of a particular height and density, with a supplement of woody plants, in rocky low hills—that even clearance of the scrub within the vicinity of the sanctuary, or overgrazing by livestock, and the changeover to lemon farming in the neighbourhood, has destroyed its fragile habitat, thus keeping it almost permanently on the ‘critically endangered’ category.

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Jerdon's Courser, Siberian Crane, Sociable Lapwing

Yet another bird in this category—often called the ICU of the Red List—is the Forest Owlet. Like the Jerdon’s Courser, this bird too was considered extinct for 113 years until it was spotted in 1997 in the Toranmal Reserve Forest of Maharashtra. Once found plentifully in dry, deciduous teak forests of central India, the Forest Owlet is now struggling against a double whammy: habitat loss and its supposedly magical powers. In a misconception that’s proving costly for the bird, tribals track down the owlet’s nest—an absurdly easy task because the owlet is unwisely a diurnal or day-time bird which nests in the same tree hollow for years—to steal the eggs, which are used by local witchdoctors to predict the lucky numbers in a gambling game that is popular in tribal haats.

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With the vultures, it’s another story altogether. All four species—White-rumped Vulture, Indian Vulture, Slender-billed Vulture, Red-headed Vulture—are now on the Red List’s Critical 13. It’s neither destruction of their habitat nor hunting which has left them a breath away from extinction. So, what has so dramatically reduced their population from millions just 15-20 years ago to less than 2,000 birds now? It was a mystery that experts managed to solve only after the vultures had almost disappeared: diclofenac, a drug that is the vet’s version of Crocin and as poisonous as cyanide for the vultures who feed on dead cattle.

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Slender-billed Vulture, Egyptian Vulture and Indian Vulture

The vultures’ case is a good example, points out Asad Rahmani, director of BNHS (Bombay Natural History Society), which has collaborated in the IUCN report, of why the government shouldn’t wait until a species is on the critically endangered list before taking action. While the BNHS is now breeding vultures in captivity in its conservatory in Pinjore, and diclofenac has finally been banned, it will take at least another two decades before the first few vultures are tentatively released into what was once their natural habitat. "The best time to save a species is when it’s still common," says Rahmani. "Once it gets on the critically endangered list, it takes heaven and earth to pull it out of danger."

The Bengal Florican, for instance, was admitted into the critically endangered category two years ago, and is likely to remain there till God—or man—takes pity on its death throes. The grassland bird has fallen victim to agricultural expansion, overgrazing and inappropriate cutting of grasslands. Heavy flooding for the last few years hasn’t helped either, reducing its population to less than 300.

It looks like India has failed the birds even as a winter residence. The tale of the disappearing Siberian Crane, once loyal winter residents in the national park in Bharatpur is well known: from the previous 3,000 birds down to a single pair by 2002, thanks to people diverting and appropriating all the water from the river that feeds the park. Less familiar is the dramatic wipeout of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper. Till a few years ago, the Spoon-billed Sandpiper was a regular visitor, loyal to the same salt water lake for generations, each flock descending on a different site in coastal Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Orissa and West Bengal. And then, disaster: first, the expansion of aquaculture, then an invasion of weeds, and to top it all, a change in the salinity of the water. In Orissa’s Chilika lake, for instance, the salinity decreased because the mouth of the lake closed up as people built up around the tourist-thronged lake. In Tamil Nadu, it was the reverse: the salinity of the Point Calimere lake where the birds arrive in small flocks increased because of industries making condensers, and even villagers encroached on the migratory waterbird’s territory to do small-scale salt farming. Result? The sandpiper has moved from the endangered to critically endangered list.

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White-bellied Heron, Bengal Florican, Spoon-billed Sandpiper

Similarly, the White-bellied Heron, once found in West Bengal, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, is now a victim of habitat loss, hunting and pollution. And the Sociable Lapwing, under extreme risk of extinction because more land went under the plough and on pesticides.

Climate change may be a decisive factor in the global decline of birds, as the coordinator of the report, Birdlife’s Stuart Butchart pointed out. But in India experts say the immediate risk for bird extinctions is not climate change so much as habitat destruction, whether it is cutting down forests or clearing scrub jungle or using wetlands and marshlands for aquaculture and agriculture. In the eternal battle of Man Versus Rest of Nature, birds are the footsoldiers on the wrong side. The Pallas’s Fish-eagle, for instance, which has been living since its evolution along our coast and inland lakes, is now facing stiff competition from fishermen and their trawlers, that don’t spare even the tiny fish on which the eagle feeds.

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But according to a few experts, it is the forest birds more than grassland and wetland birds that are under immediate risk because once they lose their specific forest habitat, they die out rather than adapt. For instance, the overwhelming majority (80 per cent) of native birds on the Red List this year are forest species. But others argue that it is absurd to draw distinctions between danger and graver danger. "We don’t even know the status of our common birds," points out Rahmani, "although we can see that some of them like sparrows, rollerbirds and drongos, are on the decline. But how can we say anything definite when the government has yet to fund a census of common birds—like they have in the UK?"

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Grim as it may sound, experts haven’t lost all hope as yet of saving our birds from extinction. What we need today, as the BNHS director points out, is government-villager partnerships. Like in Kokkrebellur, a small village in Karnataka, where the endangered Spot-billed Pelican has found such a hospitable winter home that their flock has grown from 6,000 six years ago to 11,000 birds today. At the helm of this unusual success story is an amateur birder from Mysore, K. Manu, who moved to Kokkrebellur in 1994 to try and save the pelicans from extinction, educating the villagers in conservation. In return, the pelicans have brought something the villagers never dreamt of: they put the village on the tourists’ map.

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Teach villagers how to benefit from bird tourism and the hunting and encroachments will stop on their own, feels Rahmani. "In Arunachal, for instance, the same villagers who once hunted eagles are now taking foreign tourists to see the eagles’ nests." India has a fascinating range of bird tourism with its hot and cold deserts, the Sunderbans, the Western and Eastern Ghats and both deciduous and evergreen forests, he notes. "We just haven’t realised the full potential of bird tourism like South Africa or even Thailand and Nepal."

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