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Villagers in Orissa will join hands with state wildlife officials to put an end to the rampant poaching of endangered migratory and domestic birds at the famous Chilika lake, about 100 km from the state capital Bhubaneshwar. Three people from each village around the largest saltwater lake in Asia will join the anti-poaching drive.
Chilika is known to support India’s largest concentration of migratory waterfowl. It is home to an estimated one million birds from 165 species, 93 of which are migratory. In 1973, Orissa declared the lake’s Nalaban island a bird sanctuary.
Explaining the programme, a wildlife department official said: “The poaching can be stopped only when locals get involved. Therefore, we have launched awareness programmes in most villages near the lake.”
Realising the importance of the lake as a wildlife habitat, the government has formed a special Chilika wildlife division to protect the birds. And, wildlife officials have elicited the help of locals, without whose Cupertino they realise the drive is bound to fail.
“This year, we have set up 14 special squads to check the poaching,” the official said, adding that members of the squad would patrol the 1,150 sq km lake day and night.
Earlier, young men from the 132 villages around the lake trapped birds as their principal source of livelihood. Now the Chilika Development Authority has provided them soft-term loans, in collaboration with a state-run bank, for alternative sources of income.
In the process, the people have been motivated to form `bird protection committees’ at the village level. Some even act as nature guides for tourists, a Chilika Development Authority official claimed.
However, the government euphoria may be premature warn wildlife activists. According to Wildlife Society secretary Biswajit Mohanty, the anti-poaching initiative requires serious supervision. “There is a shortage of officials to monitor the anti-poaching activities, which gets exacerbated because they are diverted for VIP visits around this season,” he says.
Similarly, boats meant for patrolling are used for tourism. Mohanty alleges that even federal government funds for anti-poaching and wildlife protection were misused. Besides which, the poachers are adopting increasingly ingenious methods to avoid getting caught. “Tranquillisers are mixed with lotus seeds, wheat or rice to sedate the birds. Nets are strung across important congregation areas,” he says, listing some of the methods employed by the poachers.
About 15,000 migratory birds have already arrived at the lake this year, and more are expected in the coming days. The birds come to Chilika every winter from as far away as the Caspian sea, the Aral sea and other remote parts of Russia, the steppes of Mongolia, central and southeast Asia, Ladakh and the Himalayas.
The main threat to their existence is the demand for their meat. Every year, government surveyors witness the grisly sight of severed bird heads floating on the lake.
Source: Indo-Asian News Service
October 23, 2003
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