India no more a hot spot for migratory birds

India is fast losing its tag of being one of the finest places for bird watchers with data indicating a decline in migratory birds visiting around 94 major wetlands in the country. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 25, 2013, 24:11:12 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India is fast losing its tag of being one of the finest places for bird watchers with data indicating a decline in migratory birds visiting around 94 major wetlands in the country.

The famous wetlands - Bharatpur national park in Rajasthan or Chilka Laka in Orissa or Kolleru wetland in Andhra Pradesh or Rann of Kachh in Gujarat - are losing their sheen and no more attracting foreign birds as they used do decades ago.

Its official confirmation came this week when environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan told Lok Sabha that there was a decline in migratory birds coming to India "Except Nordmann's Greenshan, all other species have been observed to be decline in Asia including India," the minister said.

India has 94 notified wetlands, which are also declared as sanctuaries, but many of them are in shambles in absence of conservation measures.

The government's own records show that many of these wetlands suffer from ecological degradation on account of over-exploitation and water contamination due to excessive use of pesticides in agriculture.

A recent study by Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, using satellite imagery shows that major wetlands - for attracting migratory birds - such as Dal Lake, the Sunderban, Chilka, Kolleru, Esctuaries of Karnataka Coast, Cochin Backwaters are among the seriously threatened wetlands in the country.

And, its impact is showing on arrival of majestic migratory birds through Central Asian Flyway (CAF) in India. The latest Asian Bird Census, which the ministry quoted in Parliament, shows a dip of migratory birds. "The number of birds being spotted are falling at a fast pace," said an ecologist associated with the census.

Other bird watchers believe that Asian Bird Census is not credible as it relies on sighting of birds on one given day in a year. "One cannot spot all the birds visiting in just a few hours in one day of the year," said Fayaz Khudsar, a wildlife biologist with Delhi University.

Others like Ramki Sreenivasan of online portal Conservation India wondered how such a tall claim can be made without India having any official bird census.The same portal on November 1, 2012had reported massacre of thousands of migratory Amur Falcons in north-eastern Indian state of Nagaland for purpose of sale in local markets.

The ministry admitted that hunting was a reason for decline in population of migratory birds. Around 370 species of migratory birds have been reported from India in the recent past of which 175 species undertake long distance migration using the CAF area.

These birds include Siberian cranes, flamingoes, Egyptian vultures, white tailed eagles, spoonbill sandpiper and fishing eage.

Natarajan said select scientific institutions funded by the government and NGOs working for wetlands and migratory birds have been monitoring the status of these long distance migratory birds in India.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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