Saving the Sarus Crane

Villagers, NGO join hands to save Sarus

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The Hindu, June 08, 2005
Jaipur: The school children no more steal eggs from the nesting sites of Sarus cranes along the Right Main Canal of the Chambal river near Kota town and farmers only approve of the birds' presence in their farmlands. Villagers have joined hands with conservationists in saving Sarus cranes in the Chambal territory in south-west Rajasthan.

In a unique project of local participation in wild bird conservation, people from more than half a dozen villages, 550 students and 39 teachers, were brought together by the Hadauti Natural History Society and the Hobby Nature Club with the support of the UK-based Oriental Bird Club, Bombay Natural History Society and Indian Bird Conservation Network.

The project could document as many as 20 nesting sites of the Sarus cranes along the irrigation canal system and the wetlands in and around Kota, till May this year.

"We educated the villagers and students on the ecology of Sarus cranes -- their breeding period, breeding requirements and protection of chicks'' Jatinder Kaur, who is working on a Wildlife Institute of India project on cranes in the area, said. "The villagers volunteered to form 'Rural Village Sarus Protection Groups'.'' she informed.

The Protection Groups took over the task of saving the birds from poachers. They took care of the eggs at the 20 identified nesting sites. The rural folks facilitated the hatching of the eggs and made sure that the chicks were safe throughout the fledging and weaning period.

Kota has two breeding seasons for Sarus cranes -- the wet season from July to October and the dry season from February to May. "The breeding during the dry season could be due to the availability of water in this area. The birds which fail to breed during July-October also tend to breed during the dry season,'' Ms.Kaur pointed out.

There were 22 nests during the wet season last year while in the dry season the groups could identify 6 nests, she observed.

This Sunday the conservationists held a programme in Kota to felicitate the villagers who did good work on Sarus crane conservation. Experts, Vikram Grewal of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, Gopi Sunder, principal coordinator Indian Cranes and Wetlands Working Group, Sunita Choudhary, project advisor to International Crane Foundation in India and Bharat Singh, conservationist politician and president of HNHS gave away the certificates of recognition to the new breed of conservationists.

Besides the certificates, each of the 12 selected persons --10 farmers and two principals from local schools -- were given raincoats as a utility material and a copy each of the newly-translated volume of the Birds of North India ("Uttar Bharat Ke Pakshi'') in Hindi. The experts, who could see the better survival of the Sarus chicks and decline in the mortality rate of grown up cranes, have called for the second phase of the programme.