BHUBANESWAR: There was a time when most of us woke up to the chirping of sparrows. The time is long gone as the species has been pushed to the brink of extinction by careless activities of us humans. On the occasion of World Sparrow Day, we take a look at ways which would save the unique avian wonders.
March 20 is celebrated all around the world as Sparrow Day since 2010. The international initiative was started by Nature Forever Society (NFS) in India to raise awareness about house sparrows and other such birds.
Orissa Post interacted with environmentalists and sparrow conservationists of the state to delve deeper into the subject.
Rabindra Sahu of Ganjam district started doing his bit for sparrow conservation in 2007. He was so dedicated in this endeavour that Wipro India feted him with Nature Forever Prize in 2015.
He said, “Sparrows are human friendly birds. They normally feed on rice seeds and various insects. The male sparrow finalises a place where both male and female sparrows make their nest. Farmers should stop using pesticides as it kills a lot of sparrows. Old trees should also be preserved so that they find a good place for dwelling.”
Currently, Sundergarh’s Banai, Tensa mines, Keonjhar, Paradip, Rourkela, Sonepur, Badamba, Narsinghpur of Athagada district, Bhubaneswar, Balugoan, Anugul, Gopalpur, Berhampur’s Biribatia are some of the places where the conservation programme is running successfully. Apart from these, Shimla, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Vishkhapatnam are other places where the conservation drive is going strong.
Jaykrushna Panigrahi, an environmentalist from Bhubaneswar, said, “Rapid changes in the environment is the primary cause for disappearance of sparrows. This makes it important that we create projects for safety of sparrows. Local NGO’s should also participate in such drives.”
“Wooden houses should be built and hung in every household so that they can be saved. However, NGO’s in Berhampur and Kendrapada are working in this regard successfully,” he added.
Sagar Kumar Patra of Anchalika Bikash Parishad at Gunthabandha village in Ganjam district had started conserving sparrows in 2014. There are 15 members in the group. Initially, they started their work from Kukudakhandi block’s Baghajhari village. After Phailin, the group spotted these sparrows in a nearby village. This prompted them to create sparrow homes from Gourd or Lau, earthen homes and dried coconuts for the sparrows to live.
Later, Patra along with Bijendra Majhi, Satyanarayan Jena and Silu Mohanty brought back a male and another female sparrow to Gunthabandha village. Currently, the village houses 50 sparrows. The effort took two years to be fruitful. In 2018, the forest department encouraged Anchalika Bikash Parishad to cover 22 blocks.
