Endangered Greater Adjutant Stork finds secure home to breed

DADARA (Assam): Greater Adjutant Stork, the world's most endangered of the stork species, has found a secure home to breed in two nondescript villages of Assam's Kamrup district, heralding a new chapter in its conservation.

A campaign was launched four years ago at Dadara and Pacharia villages, home to nearly 50 per cent of the bird's global population, to save the birds which were approaching the red zone in the conservation scale by ' Aaranyak', a wildlife conservation organisation.

Earlier, widely distributed throughout northern and eastern India and many countries of south and south-east Asia, the Greater Adjutant Stork is currently distributed only in Assam and Bihar in India and a few other locations in Cambodia.

The Brahmaputra Valley in Assam is considered the last stronghold of the endangered stork, locally called ' Hargila', and harbours more than 80 per cent of the global population of the species.

"The irony is that many traditional nesting colonies of this bird have disappeared in the last few decades and now there are only a few nesting colonies left in Assam," said Wildlife biologist Purnima Devi Barman, who is spearheading the campaign.

The main problem of conservation of this bird is that "it breeds in privately-owned nesting trees in colonies and their future depends on the willingness and support of these tree-owners," she said.

Initially, when the campaign was started in 2009 "We found that many people having the nesting colonies in their houses cut the trees to get rid of this bird which feed on carcasses and live vertebrates as they made their campus dirty," Barman said.