Campaign on to search yellow weaver bird

Jotirmay Thapliyal

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, March 28

The state forest authorities have started a campaign to search for yellow weaver bird. Yellow weaver bird holds much significance as it is found only in two regions of the country. One is north east and the other in Terai grassland of Kumaon division. The rampant industrialisation in the Terai area has adversely affected this bird’s habitat.

Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) Dr Dhananjaya Mohan, who is leading the campaign, said the search campaign to locate the bird had already started and included experts from the Wildlife Institute of India.

The eight-month long project includes intensive surveys in the Terai area. “As the current season is also a breeding season for birds, there are chances of sightings of the yellow weaver,” Dr Mohan said. Its breeding occurs from May to September in colonies. Nests are built in treetops or in reed-beds. In the non-breeding season, the bird moves around but comes back to traditional nesting sites every year.

Significantly, BirdLife International, a global organisation that keeps tracks of avian fauna, lists this species as vulnerable terming it as rapidly declining, and severely fragmented population as a result of the loss and degradation of Terai grasslands, principally through conversion to agriculture and overgrazing.

BirdLife International had even suggested for up listing this bird to the endangered category.

The Terai area that falls in Udham Singh Nagar district has also seen rampant industrialisation in the recent times. It has become a major centre of modern industrial development which has engulfed many breeding sites of yellow weaver, particularly in the immediate vicinity of Rudrapur town. Most of the area where a modern industrial estate has been developed between Rudrapur and Pantnagar was earlier an important habitat of the yellow weaver.

The recent records of the bird come from surveys conducted in 2006-07 when it was last seen at a few locations in the Rudrapur-Pantnagar-Bilaspur area of Kumaon foothills. Malvika Onial, a scientist from the Wildlife Institute of India, observed some flocks from April to July 2006.