Forest department to conserve heronries in North Kerala

The Forest Department will soon launch a programme to conserve heronries, communal nesting places of large water birds, in four districts in North Kerala.

It plans to enlist public support to protect 15 “resident and breeding” water bird species, which are vulnerable to poaching and loss of habitat, in Kannur, Malappuram, Palakkad and Wayanad districts.

Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Raja Raja Varma, is finalising the scheme in consultation with ornithologist C. Sashikumar, who is the principal investigator of the department’s ongoing Malabar Ornithological Survey 2010-11.

The investigators had surveyed 102 sites and counted 8,677 nests of 12 species of water birds in August. They recorded their habits, documented the nesting trees (34 different species including bamboo clumps, mangroves and some exotic varieties planted as avenue trees) and mapped nearby wetlands. They also assessed the threats to the sites and problems such habitats posed to local populations.

The surveyors found that Kannur had the highest number of heronries (28) and nests (3917). In Wayanad, 766 water birds of nine different species nested in three heronries. More than 93 per cent of the heronries were on Government land, mostly on trees near roadsides, markets, bus stops, police stations, hospitals and riverbanks.

The Indian Pond Heron and the Little Cormorant were the most common species and shared 71 per cent of the heronries in the region.

Oriental White Ibis, classified as “near threatened” by the International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN), was perhaps among the rarest of the resident water birds and nested “only” at Panmaram in Wayanad. In the South, the Ibis nested at Kumarakam in Kottayam district.

The surveyors, arguably for the first time, found that the Darter (Snake Bird), another “near” threatened species, nested in North Kerala in a heronry near Nanniyoor on the banks of Valapattanam River.

Local people often viewed such habitats as a nuisance owing to the excess of bird droppings, dead chicks and half eaten frogs and fish that litter the ground beneath nesting sites. The birds were most vulnerable during their breeding season, which coincided with the south west monsoon.

The Forest department will rope in students, bird watchers and ornithologists to sensitize the public on the importance of water birds to the vast wetland and agricultural eco-systems in North Kerala.

Source: The Hindu 21-09-2011