Feathered friends of India now homeward bound

IANS | Apr 14, 2013
SHIMLA: They still take the traditional Silk Route. Only, unlike ancient traders and travellers, they take wings.

The feathered guests that descend on various waterbodies across India with the onset of winter, after crossing national and international boundaries to avoid the extreme chill of their native habitats in Tibet, Central Asia, Russia and Siberia, are now set to make their annual return journey.

A migratory bird in the Kangra Valley's Pong wetlands in Himachal Pradesh, which was tagged with a global positioning system (GPS) transmitter last winter, has returned to its native China. A few other bird species are currently in lakes in Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan, after their winter sojourn in Pong's man-made wetlands, in the Himalayan foothills, about 250 km from state capital Shimla.

A few "holidaying" birds remain, though, in Pong.

"A pintail that was tagged with a satellite transmitter in Pong was recorded last week in China. Another bird of the same species has reached Kyrgyzstan," chief wildlife Warden AK Gulati told IANS.

He said the migratory routes of the birds stretched from India to China, with brief stopovers at key wetlands in the Himalayas and the trans-Himalayas.

The state wildlife department, in association with the Mumbai-based Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), under a central government-aided project to track their migratory routes through satellite, tagged 14 migratory birds of different species for the third consecutive year in Pong.

BNHS assistant director S Balachandran, who installed the GPS chips on the birds and monitored their movements, said a common teal, tagged in Pong, was recently recorded in Pakistan.

Two birds - a greylag goose and a shoveller - were recorded in Srinagar and Harike in Punjab, respectively, this month.

"They might be on their return journey from Pong to their native habitats," he said.

Balachandran said a tagged common teal and a shoveller are still roosting in Pong.

"Some common teals and shovellers are still in Pong. They could start their return journey to their native habitats anytime now," he said.

Crossing national and international boundaries, millions of migratory birds of several species descend on various water bodies and wetlands in the region. They start returning by the end of February or the beginning of March.

In the last two years, the BNHS also installed metal bands and red and white neck collars with a serial number, place and date on more than 350 migratory birds in Pong.

The prominent species were the bar-headed geese, pintails, common teals, coots, cormorants, European lapwing, shovellers and wigeons.

Wildlife officials said a common teal that was ringed in Pong last year was shot dead in northeast Russia this year.

Around 123,000 waterfowl of 113 species were recorded in a census conducted by the wildlife wing in the first week of February at Pong Dam wildlife sanctuary spread over 307 sq km.

The largest influx was of the bar-headed goose, a regular visitor from Central Asia, including Tibet and Ladakh. Their number was around 34,000, wildlife officials said.

The other main species found were northern pintail (21,000), common pochard (12,000) and little cormorant (7,700), besides common coot, red-crested pochard, great cormorant, pintail duck, river tern and great-crested grebe.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/flora-fauna/Feathered-friends-of-India-now-homeward-bound/articleshow/19541384.cms

Diclofenac still a major threat for vultures

PTI
New Delhi: Human formulations of the drug Diclofenac banned for veterinary use are still being illegally used to treat cattle, posing a grave danger to the already critically-endangered vulture population, say experts.

"Till the late 80s vultures could be seen breeding in Talkatora gardens as well in large hoards in various parts of the city. Once they were very common and we were worried about their excessive numbers. But that has changed. The population has witnessed an alarming crash over the past few decades," says environmentalist Ravi Aggarwal.

Almost 99 per cent of the scavenger birds are today on the verge of extinction, he points out.

"The annual mortality of the long living and slow breeding birds is not more than 5 per cent. However by mid 1990s and 2000, the species mortality rate ratcheted up to a high and 90 per cent of the vulture population had already disappeared," says Vibhu Prakash, who heads the vulture conservation programme of the Bombay Natural History Society.

The culprit was found to be use of Diclofenac, a drug which gets ingested into the birds body when they feed on the cattle treated with the drug forming white crystals of uric acid deposits on the vital organs.

Unable to excrete uric acid, the kidneys of the birds fail and eventually the vultures die of dehydration. 

"In India, 76 per cent of the dead vultures when examined showed symptoms of visceral gout. All of them had residues of diclofenac in their body. The drug is 30 to 40 times as toxic to vultures as cyanide is to rats," says Prakash.

Taking into consideration the vulture ecology, Prakash points out that "even less than 1 per cent of the carcass which has the drug can cause the kind of crash in the population which we have seen in the country."

In 2006, the Centre came up with the Vulture Action Plan whose key recommendations included a ban on the use of diclofenac, use of an alternative drug to diclofenac and initiation of a conservation breeding plan. But despite Diclofenac being banned for veterinary use the drug available in multi-dose vials for humans, is used illegally to treat cattle, point out experts.

The vulture conservation programme of BHNS, has bred some 300 birds, including 46 chicks, in three breeding centres- Pinjore in Haryana, Rani in Assam and in West Bengal. "The Society, he says, has set the 2016 as the target year to begin releasing its captive vultures," says Prakash.

Experts point out the significant role vultures play in maintaining equilibrium in the ecology.

The vultures act like scavengers to keep the environment clean by feeding on the carcass dumps. A colony of vultures can finish off a full grown cow within minutes. A dead animal asts as a culture medium of fungus and bacteria which starts growing and multiplying as soon as the animal dies, they form spores and penetrate into the soil and water and spread disease.

Populations of three Asian vulture species (White-rumped Vulture, Long-billed Vulture, and Slender-billed Vulture) have declined by more than 99 per cent in South Asia since the early 1990s. "There is a total number of 1000 slender billed vulture, 44000 round billed vulture and 12000 White vulture," says Prakash.

Talking about the Gyp Species of the vultures, Prakash points that they formed 99 per cent of the vulture population and feed on soft tissues and vital organs which form the bulk of animal body.

The Long Billed vultures nest on the cliffs and is found only in India and some parts of Pakistan and thus if the species disappear, they will become extinct.

"The slender billed vultures, one of the rarest vultures in the world, remain less than thousand today," says the scientist.

Prakash explains that if 600 pairs of each of the three species are released in the wild that will form a genetically viable and self sustainable population.

"And to get 600 pairs, we need to breed 150 pairs of each of the three species. One of the major problems with these breeding centres is that the birds have to be kept in captivity. This means they cannot soar in the sky. This, in turn, causes problems in the feet. We have already bred 50 birds in the centre under the breeding program," he says.

A lack of implementation, strong lobby and power equation as some of the major reasons which is preventing the drug Diclofenac from being wiped off completely point out experts.

"There are number of companies manufacturing meloxicam, an alternate drug for veterinary use, yet human formulations are being used for treating livestock which is a dangerous situation for vultures which continue to die. Meloxicam, compared to diclofenac, is an expensive drug," says Prakash.

While some activists say targeted advocacy and awareness generation could help in banning Diclofenac completely, others say the side effects of the drug on human body could be used and run as a parallel campaign.

Other experts also suggest the use of films and puppet shows as an effective advocacy tool to ban the drug completely and generate awareness.

The experts were participating in a lecture on "The Magnificent Vulture - End of the Road?" here which was followed by a screening of the "Vanishing vultures" directed by noted wildlife filmmaker Mike Pandey.

Source: http://zeenews.india.com/news/eco-news/diclofenac-still-a-major-threat-for-vultures_839017.html

Scripting An Almanac, One Bird At A Time

A project to track bird movements across India may help pin down the reasons why the number of migratory birds is declining. Akshai Jain reports

Last flight? Migratory pelicans and
painted storks at a small pond near
Dholera, 110 km from Ahmedabad.
Photo: AFP

RAMIT SINGAL, a 22-year-old engineering student, was puzzled. The Common Sandpiper, a small dust-coloured bird that migrates every winter from Russia to India, had been late arriving. Instead of getting to Manipal, (where Singal studies), in early August, the birds had arrived in mid-September. “Other migrants, like the Lesser Sand Plover, were also late,” he says.

In Mysore, a few hundred kilometres away, A Shivaprakash was pondering over another ornithological question. Being a scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, puzzles don’t ruffle him, but the decline in the number of water birds in the lakes around Mysore was still troubling.

Till a decade ago, his birding group counted nearly 3 lakh migratory birds every season across 200 small and big lakes in Mysore, Chamarajanagar and Coorg districts. “But in the past seven or eight years,” he sighs, “there’s been a drastic reduction. I don’t think we have counted more than 50,000 birds.”

Birdwatchers in other parts of the country have also been alarmed by the decline in the numbers of migratory birds and the increasingly late arrivals of species that do come.

Unfortunately, in the absence of any long-term monitoring data on Indian bird species, it’s impossible to evaluate these changes scientifically, with a certainty that goes beyond anecdotal evidence and conjecture. Without the reference point that this data constitutes — referred to as a baseline in scientific parlance — it is impossible to say whether the shifts reported by birdwatchers are routine fluctuations or indicators of a far graver problem. Ornithologists find themselves in the position of a football referee tasked with calling a goal in a field that has no posts.

“At present, we suspect even so-called common species such as Common Drongo, Indian Roller, Hoopoe, Magpie Robin and Common Nightjar have declined due to habitat destruction and extensive use of pesticides,” says Dr Asad Rahmani, director of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). “But we don’t have good scientific data to back this impression.”

Now, MigrantWatch, a ‘citizen science’ programme that relies on the observations of hundreds of amateur birdwatchers like Singal and Shivaprakash, is changing that.

The programme, started by Suhel Quader, an ecologist at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bengaluru, has built up a meticulous database of common winter migrants.

Birdwatchers from across the country upload detailed observations from their birding trips on the programme’s website. Quader and his team then collate it, charting the arrival and departure of migrant species, and tracking their movement through the country.

Anniversaries might be irrelevant in the natural world, but for MigrantWatch, the five years it has just completed is a milestone that marks significant progress towards establishing a baseline.

From monitoring just nine migratory species when it started, it now monitors 246 species, focussing on 30 common and easily identified migrants. Over 600 birders have contributed to this database, which just hit 19,000 observations.

After a slow start, interest in the programme has shot up. “More people have joined us in the past year-and-a-half,” says Quader proudly, “than in the first four years put together.”

More significantly, the observational dots are joining up and the faint outline of patterns emerging. For 20 species, MigrantWatch has accumulated 200 or more observations, and for another six, it has more than 500 observations each.

Source: http://tehelka.com/scripting-an-almanac-one-bird-at-a-time/

India praised for its vulture conservation efforts

Saswati Mukherjee, TNN | Feb 21, 2013, 02.11 PM IST

The paper published in the journal "Science"
by Dr Andrew Balmford of Cambridge University
gives a perspective on the progress of
vulture conservation in South Asia.

BANGALORE: The vultures in South Asia have been under threat for over a decade now. But the silver lining is that India has acted quickly to conserve this species, as compared to many western countries in the past in the case of other environmental pollutants. A new research paper in 'Science' has observed that the central and state governments in India were quick enough to bring the vultures back from the brink, with help of research institutions such as BNHS, under the SAVE (Saving Asia's Vultures from Extinction) consortium. The paper further states that many western countries have been much slower in acting upon the environmental impacts of pesticides that were felt over decades.

Timely action

The paper published in the journal "Science" by Dr Andrew Balmford of Cambridge University gives a perspective on the progress of vulture conservation in South Asia. It attributes the progress so far to the quick response of the governments in the region to the vulture crises by banning veterinary diclofenac. The pesticide effect in the West continues to cause grave damage to non-target organisms. But in South Asia, the fact that vulture declines have significantly slowed and possibly even reversed has been directly attributed to the prompt action over the past decade.

Expressing satisfaction on the action taken by authorities in India so far, BNHS Director, Asad Rahmani said, "The timely ban on veterinary diclofenac in South Asia, along with the research and conservation efforts of BNHS and the SAVE partners, based on scientific facts has proved to be a successful step in the right direction". Commenting on the issue author Dr Balmford said, "The vulture collapse is an immense problem - in its sheer extent as well as in its significance for people. So news that the declines are beginning to slow and even reverse is extremely welcome and a testament both to the tremendous hard work of all the NGOs in the SAVE consortium and to the responsiveness of governments in the region."

The way ahead

However, it has to be noted that the job of saving the vultures is far from complete. Before the captive bred vultures can be safely released back into the wild across South Asia, it needs to be ensured that the countryside does not have diclofenac lingering in the food chain. Vulture Safe Zones (VSZs) need to be identified in various regions. The recent SAVE meeting held in Kathmandu in November 2012 stressed the need for preventing human diclofenac being used for veterinary purpose. This can be achieved by packaging human diclofenac in smaller vials not larger than 3ml, which would be much less convenient for using on cattle. Talking on the issue, Chris Bowden, Programme Manager, SAVE said, "Establishing a safety-testing system for alternative veterinary drugs is essential since some of them are probably as dangerous as diclofenac. Government action so far has been quite good and with the help of IVRI (Indian Veterinary Research Institute), we hope that these last essential steps can also be taken".

Populations of the three Asian vulture species, viz. Oriental White-backed Vulture, Long-billed Vulture and Slender-billed Vulture, declined by more than 99% in South Asia since the early 1990s. Veterinary diclofenachad lethal effects on vultures that fed on cattle carcasses, which had been treated with the drug shortly before death. Thegovernments in South Asia subsequently banned the veterinary use of the painkiller in 2006. Meanwhile, scientists from BNHS and RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, UK), along with forest departments in various states of India have been successfully working on vulture breeding, advocacy and field research such as carcass sampling. The SAVE consortium for efforts across borders was set up in 2011 and subsequently a new Regional Steering Committee has been set up by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Indian Government. At present over 250 vultures are being nurtured in the three BNHS conservation breeding centres in India. In 2012, 26 new vultures were raised. In the wild, the latest trends suggest that the vulture decline has slowed since 2007 and White-backed Vulture numbers have even increased in some localised areas.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/flora-fauna/India-praised-for-its-vulture-conservation-efforts/articleshow/18608037.cms

Cauvery delta ecosystem in deep water

G.SATHYAMOORTHI
The Cauvery eco-system is in deep trouble with the current year being one of the worst drought years that the river has witnessed.

The delta region, known as ‘Marudha Nilam’, can no longer have that nomenclature as it is now shorn of Marudu trees, a native plant. The ‘minimum viable population’ (MVP) size of this tree has gone down and has become virtually an ‘endangered species’.

Frequent loss of flows in the river over the past four decades has resulted in gradual degradation of the eco-system, laments K.V.Krishnamurthy, former Head of the Department of Botany, Bharathidasan University, considered an authority on the Cauvery’s flora and fauna.

Even the migratory birds would shun the State if the current drought-like situation continued, warns S. Balachandran, Deputy Director, Bombay Natural History Society.

Potability of the water along the banks of the Cauvery and the Coleroon is going to be a question mark sooner or later, apprehends V.Ganapathi, advisor, Exnora International.

Indiscriminate sand quarrying all along the banks of the Cauvery has resulted in the gradual loss of water- holding capacity of the river itself, says R.Nandakumar, who has spearheaded a movement against sand mining and has won a major case in the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court recently. “Loss of one cubic metre of sand will result in the loss of capacity to hold three cubic metres of water’, he adds.

Prof.Krishnamurthy told The Hindu that it was during 1970s such loss of flows in the Cauvery started and over the years the phenomenon has resulted in creation of “huge islands of vegetation” all along the course of the river.

“Such an island virtually looks like a forest near Grand Anaicut’, he points out.

The major problem arising out of this situation is that the sand in the river gets reduced and mud is formed. “The typical riverine land structure will be lost”, both with regard to “physical and biological parameters”. “Thus sand will become soil.”

Even in the Coleroon and some parts of the Cauvery such islands of vegetation have formed an aquatic bed and the size of this vegetation patch will gradually increase.” This will become a major problem in due course of time”.

As flow of water has become less, stagnant pools are formed and they give rise to noxious aquatic elements that prevent the flow of water.

Along the banks, the native vegetation is gone and that space is occupied by “alien invasive flora (plants)”. During the last 15-20 years this has been happening substantially. “Thus the threshold value of many of the native plants including Marudu has slumped”, says Prof.Krishnamurthy.

With regard to fauna, he says there were 80 species of 23 fish families in the Cauvery system 40 years ago. Of them five species are exclusive for the Cauvery. Now their population has dwindled and many of them have lost their MVP size. Same is the case with “fresh water prawns”. On the other hand, mosquito population has been on the rise.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/article3748784.ece