In a
recent survey done in Guwahati by conservation society Early Birds, the
endangered Greater Adjutant Stork (or Hargilla) population was pegged at the
‘stable’ figure of 220. But according to local activists, habitat loss for the
bird continues to be a pressing problem.
Written
by Tora Agarwala |
Guwahati | Updated: September 15, 2018 8:30:27 pm
In a
recent survey done in Guwahati last week by conservation society Early Birds,
the Hargilla population was pegged at 220.
While
traffic jams in a city like Guwahati are commonplace, last year — a day before
Diwali — the cause for a hold-up in GS Road was an unexpected one: a huge, gangly
bird, seemingly lost among the din of cars and people as it tried to make sense
of its new surroundings.
Before
the concerned authorities could come rescue it, the bird — an endangered
species called the Greater Adjutant Stork, locally known as the Hargilla — took
off itself. However, for the stork, adapting to changing environs is something
it has been compelled to do over the last few decades. As its natural habitat —
wetlands (or beels) — disappear, the stork has taken to living in
garbage dumps which dot the city of Guwahati, the biggest one behind the
Guwahati Medical College.
For long,
villagers would shun the stork, but today, conservation efforts by local
organisations and activists have changed the its fate.
Ignored
for years, recent media reports have extensively covered conservation efforts
to protect Assam’s “ugly old bird” — at a height of five feet, with an
eight-foot wing span, reports show that out of the 1,200 Hargillas in the
world, about 800 are in Assam. It features in the IUCN Red List of Threatened
Species — in 1988, it was “threatened” but from 1994, it has been
considered “endangered”. The decline goes back to the first half of the
20th century — but the bird can still be spotted parts of Bangladesh,
Cambodia, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam — and India, of course (mostly Assam and
Bihar).
