Help save the birds

I remember the first letter I wrote to the GDN some years ago when I was just out of school.

I had picked up my brother from school and on our way home, we found a pigeon run over by a car at the signal near the Sacred Heart Church.

The sight of the dead bird near an area that is home to scores of them upset me so much, I marched home horrified and in rage.

The next couple of hours found me busy poring over the telephone directory to look up animal rights organisations and writing a very angry letter to the paper.

I never sent it in, as I thought the editor would have a good laugh reading my call for bird rights and special feeding grounds and because my parents were alarmed that I had turned so militant.

Much of my earlier enthusiasm for the birds - I used to steadfastly collect fallen pigeon feathers and attach them to cards and letters - disappeared when I moved to Mumbai.

For the first few months, my roommates and I battled crows that attacked our food, buried eggs laid by pigeons in our buckets and kept vigil guarding our room from all winged creatures.

Things took a turn for the worse when I returned to city last month and was woken up at 3am everyday by an eerie bloodcurdling noise.

The 'beast' it transpired was a flock of beautiful green parrots, making a racket while they relished mangoes that ripened outside my window.

It soon grew to a point that I was teetering on the verge of hating birds forever, when a news story about a lesser crested tern, which died on a Mumbai beach earlier this year, grabbed my attention.

The bird which carried the tag of the British Trust for Ornithology was reportedly ringed on the Fasht Al Jarrim Islands, north of mainland Bahrain.

The ring was later sent to the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and my curiosity led me to do some research on the society and this reawakened my interest in birds.

The society, among its numerous conservation efforts to protect the wildlife of India, runs 'Adopt a Rare Bird', a joint initiative of BirdLife International and the UK-based Royal Society for Protection of Birds.

From the catalogue of 12 rare birds, which include two critically endangered species, you may adopt a bird for just Rs300 (BD2.3).

Proceeds of the adoption go towards protection of the birds and you receive a framed photograph of the bird you've adopted, which makes a very nice gift.

Last week, I adopted a forest owlet (Athene blewitti), of which only 250 are estimated to be remaining in India.

BNHS central marketing head Divyesh Parikh told me that there is a growing interest among people to protect birdlife, as more than 5,000 adoptions took place last year, raising Rs150,000 (BD1,198.6).

'Adopt a Rare Bird' programme details can be found on the BNHS website www.bnhs.org and the World Wildlife Fund also runs similar initiatives.

I realised only recently that my earlier annoyance with birds was baseless as we have effectively usurped their habitats, leaving them no home and more vulnerable to extinction.

It is only right that we start giving something back.

¥ Ms Gnana is a former Bahrain resident now studying in Mumbai

Copyright 2010 Al Hilal Publishing and Marketing Group

'Help save the birds', Gulf Daily News, July 9, 2010, Jennifer Gnana

Swan song to wake up

The Alaotra grebe has gone the way of the Dodo. The Madagascan bird was declared officially extinct this week by International Union for Conservation of Nature after 25 years of futile hope that it could be kept alive. The water bird joins the list of 190 species that have gone extinct since modern records began. While there has been a recent surge of interest in protecting ecosystems from pollution and deforestation, there is very little or no awareness about threats to earth's biodiversity. Of the millions of species, plants and animals that have thrived and walked the earth, many have died out. Even as we spend millions to unearth fossils of dinosaurs and mammoths, to view their remains in museums, there are many lesser known living species that could soon join their extinct ranks. The growth of cities too has blinded us to many other life forms that exist around us. An average man might see just a fraction of the vast biodiversity and never hear of the grebe or the Liverpool pigeon which became extinct in 2008. The irony is we always wake up when it is too late to save anything. The grebe died out being easy prey to carnivorous fish and poachers. There were two decades since 1985 when it was last sighted and several years before, for us to have done something to save it when it was understood that the bird was critically endangered. We could have, for instance, provided a better habitat and protected it from breeding with birds of a similar species. But honestly, how many of us do care if a species of bird is alive or extinct? Whatever the scientific claims of creating artificial life may be, we can't however much we try, resurrect a species that has been wiped out. All we have left of the grebe is a sole photograph and an artist's impression of how it might have looked. I think it is a shame on us to leave nothing but photographs of co-existing life forms for our children. While ambitious plans to preserve our cultural heritage and the DNA of endangered species in a 'Noah's Ark' are being undertaken in various places, I think it is high time we saved the living while they are still alive. Besides the fact that extinction creates a vacuum in the ecosystem, what bothers me most is the gross injustice of it all. What gives humans the right to think that because we are advanced in some ways, we have been given divine right to stamp out other creatures? We can't afford to be blasé about it and think animals can breed and look after themselves. Highly important as it is to look after the starving populations on earth, we also have to contribute towards preserving wildlife. We may have achieved a lot in terms of civilisation, but we haven't and never can repopulate the earth the way it was when it began. If we continue to encroach upon the habitats of other species and distort the natural order of things, we may find ourselves the only species left alive. And going by the way things are, there is no guarantee that we will not stamp each other out. The death of the Alaotra grebe should be a wake-up call that every life form down to the smallest cricket has its rightful place on earth and deserves to be conserved. ¥ Jennifer Gnana is a former Bahrain resident now studying in Mumbai. Her family still lives here. Copyright 2010 Al Hilal Publishing and Marketing Group 'Swan song to wake up' , Gulf Daily News, May 28, 2010, Jennifer Gnana