Endangered Greater Adjutant takes a liking to artificial nest platforms

BY A STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI, Dec 14: In a very encouraging development towards conservation of a globally threatened species, an artificial nest platform was seen to be used by Greater Adjutant, an endangered bird. Aaranyak, a city-based NGO, celebrated the breeding season of this species through a happy hatching ceremony with villagers a few days ago and expressed happiness over this success. It was observed that lack of proper nesting tree was a major problem for this bird.

The ‘Greater adjutant’ is a globally threatened bird and the current global population is about 1200. Assam harbouring about 700 to 800 birds of this species is considered its global stronghold.  In Assam, this bird makes its nesting colonies in privately owned trees in the middle of the villages.  However, many nesting trees were either cut down by villagers in the last several years from many exotic breeding colony sites in Assam while some of them were destroyed due to tural causes.

Aaranyak experimentally tried to erect artificial nest platform made out of bamboos next to the traditiol nesting location in the Dadara-Pacharia area near the city.  Interestingly a pair of Stork has constructed a nest on it a few days back while the female is seen to be incubating over the eggs.

This is for the first time in India that such effort was given in situ by constructing an artificial nest platform for any endangered bird and the target species has started using it as soon as  within two months of construction. This experiment may be a permanent answer to save many threatened large bird species who are finding it difficult to locate a proper nesting tree in their traditiol nesting locations. The conservationist community is now eagerly waiting to a successful nesting of this bird in this artificial nest platform with the new chicks. 

Purnima Devi Barman, the Green Oscar winner of 2017 who leads the Greater Adjutant conservation projects of Aaranyak said: “Nesting tree is a limiting factor and seven nesting trees turally fell down this year. So I immediately tried this experiment.  We tried this with very limited resources. But now, I am confident that we can expand this initiative next year, and many other conservationists can also try this with respect to other endangered species.”  Aaranyak as a registered society has been working in North East India for the past 27 years towards nourishing the region’s tural heritage to secure the flora and fau in the region known as one of the biodiversity hotspots of the world.