Great Indian Bustards Rediscovered In Bellary District, Karnataka, India
Great Indian Bustard, thought to be extinct in Karnataka , was rediscovered by a team of Naturalists from Bellary on 12-05-2006. The team comprised of Mr Santosh Martin, President of the Sloth Bear Foundation, Mr K.S.A. Samad and Mr Anand Kundargi who have been working on this project since a couple of years. GIBs were last sighted in Ranebennur Bustard Sancutuary in the year 2000. Ever since, there have been no sightings and was considered to be extinct in Karnataka. This rediscovery has elated all the bird watchers and the wildlife enthusiasts.
Copyright (C) Dinesh Singhi
Great Indian Bustards (Ardeotis nigriceps) are critically endangered species found in India and Pakistan and are Classified as Endangered (EN – C1+2b) on the IUCN Red List 2002, and listed on Appendix I of CITES. It has been officially declared as extinct in Pakistan and India has lesser than 490 of these birds left with the majority of them found in Desert National Park, Rajasthan and a few distributed in Gujarat, Maharastra, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.
Media coverage of the discovery
The Hindu, Friday, April 14, 2006
By M. Ahiraj
"It'S A Dream Come True"
BELLARY : It was an exciting experience for a team of Naturalists and birdwatchers from Bellary, Comprising Santosh Martin, Executive Trustee of the recently floated Sloth Bear Foundation, Srinivas Bidar, Joint Commissioner of Income tax and Anand, a local, when they sighted three Great Indian Bustards amidst a semi- arid tract in Siruguppa taluk, Bellary district, on Wednesday.
Endangered Species
The Great Indian Bustard is an endangered species and their number has been estimated at not more than 600 in the country.
Though it was known that Siruguppa taluk is among the very few pockets in the country where the birds are found, they had been rarely sighted.
The team of naturalists left for Siruguppa early in the day to look for birds.
On reaching Siruguppa, Mr Anand guided them towards a semi-arid grassland, adjacent to an interior road between Hatcholli and Kudadarhal, about 20 Kms from the towm, where he sighted a pair of birds on Tuesday. Even before the team could take out the camera, one of its members spotted three birds flying away. The team then rushed to the area where the birds were feeding.
Proposal
"It was a dream come true for me. I could only sight the birds during my third expedition in the past few months. Now, through our foundation and with the help of nature lovers and birdwatchers, we will submit a proposal to the Department of Forests to take steps to conserve and protect the endangered species," Mr Martin said.
Other places
Apart from Siruguppa , the Great Indian Bustards are also found in Gadag, Mundargi and Ranebennur. However, the birds have not been sighted in the past couple of years in these areas. Around 80 percent of the birds are found in the Desert National Park in Rajasthan and a small number of them in Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharastra.
The arid and semi- arid grasslands in the interior of the taluk, are typical habitats of these birds and also that of Black Bucks.
Numbers reducing
The number of these birds has been coming down as their habitats are getting converted into agricultural fields.
The bird is as large as 92cms to 122 cms and weigh around 12 kgs. As they are big in size they require substantial wild habitat to survive.
These birds can breed at any time of the year, but it is usually initiated by the start of the rains and the annual rains are thus important for maintaining its numbers.
Indian Express, Monday, May 1, 2006
By Ashish Mathew
BANGALORE , April 29 : A recent expedition by naturalists Santosh Martin and K.S.A.Samad has confirmed the presence of the critically endangered bird, "Great Indian Bustard" (Ardeotis nigriceps, GIBs) in Siruguppa taluk, Bellary. Only four ‘Bustards’ have been spotted in the State. There are about 490 birds in the whole of India.
Today their numbers are dwindling , as their habitats are being converted into agricultural fields to meet the nation’s food requirement. With fragmentation of arid grasslands, these birds are fast disappearing. Forest officials say that the 'bustards' were last sighted in Ranebennur in 2001. Since then not a single bird has been spotted by forest officials despite many arduous expeditions.
On April 11, Santosh Martin, President of Sloth Bear Foundation in Bellary, received a phone call from Anand Kundargi, who is an ardent bird watcher, that he had spotted two Great Indian Bustards (GIBs) in a dry cotton field near Siruguppa. Kundargi who was carrying a camera with him, shot a couple of pictures of the birds.
An excited Martin and a few of his friends went to Siruguppa early next morning and reached the site where the birds were sighted. They spotted three GIBs. “We saw four birds on the second day and we were elated” Martin told the Express.
The GIBs are on the endangered 'red' list of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) . The Indian Bustard is the most endangered of the Bustard family in the world and the total populationin the wild may not exceed 700.
Poaching and habitat deterioration are the two main causes for the drastic decline of the GIBs. The three sanctuaries where the Indian Bustard can still be seen are the Desert National Park (Rajasthan), the Lala-Parjau Sanctuary and the Abdasa Sanctuary in western Kutch (Gujarat). According to Martin, out of the 490 that still exist in India, 400 of them can be found in the above mentioned sanctuaries and 90 of them are spread out in States like Maharastra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
The Indian Bustard is a tall, long legged bird. The under parts and neck are white, there is a black crown on the forehead and the upper body is brown. The wings are marked in black, brown and grey. It is about 120 cm in size and weighs close to 18 kg. Martin said that he was happy that the birds were found in the State. To contact Martin, call 9845269512
Five Bear Cubs Seized In Hubli
Police crack down on bear cub trade
Source: bestfriends.org
March 25, 2005
Five sloth bear cubs were rescued in police raids in the city of Hubli, which also led to the arrest of seven animal traffickers. The actions follow a three-month undercover operation by the Indian animal welfare group Wildlife S.O.S in the Hubli regions.
The bear cubs, which are aged between three and six weeks, were removed from the forested regions in the surrounding districts of the city. Their captors had aimed to sell them for use as dancing bears. After a court hearing, the accused were charged with offences under the Wildlife Protection Act and face a maximum prison sentence of seven years if found guilty at trial.
The five cubs, one female and four males, were given to the Karnataka Forest Department, who, in turn, handed them over to Wildlife S.O.S for relocation to the group's Bear Rescue Facility near Agra, in the North of India.
Sloth bears (Melursus ursinus) are found in the wild throughout India and, although no comprehensive survey of their population numbers have been compiled, Wildlife S.O.S estimates that between 5,000-6,000 survive in the wild. Additionally, there are approximately one thousand captive sloth bears in the country held by Kalandars, a nomadic gypsy community who use them in street entertainment. These 'dancing bears' are tamed at a young age to be obedient to their masters. Their incisor teeth are pulled out, their claws are cropped and a chain or rope is pieced through their nose and lip to keep them subdued. Previous investigations by Wildlife S.O.S reveal that all of the captive bears were illegally captured from the wild at just a few weeks old. Hunters, operating in remote tribal areas, locate the mother's den and usually remove the cubs when she is out searching for food. If the mother returns and attempts to defend her cubs, she will be killed.
"This is the second year in a row we have infiltrated gangs capturing and selling bear cubs," said Kartick Satyanarayan, co-founder of Wildlife S.O.S. "Year by year we are breaking a trade which has decimated India's wild sloth bear population and consigned these magnificent animals to a live of misery."
At the Agra Bear Rescue Facility the new arrivals have joined 70 other refugees from the dancing bear trade. Most bears are adults that have been surrendered voluntarily by Kalandars in return for support with retraining so they can establish new livelihoods. Seven cubs, seized in police raids in January 2004 are now a year old and already as strong as a grown man. For the next three months, the five new arrivals will be fed a diet of enriched kitten milk, a preparation which most closely matches the milk of mother bears. "These cubs should have been in a den with their mother at this age" said Geeta Seshamani, another co-founder of Wildlife S.O.S. Seshamani is "mother bear" for the bear cubs at the centre and helps coordinate the anti-poaching work.
The cubs will be housed in den-simulated conditions monitored by CCTV cameras at the Cub Weaning Unit at the Agra center. They will eventually be sharing a series of electrically fenced natural enclosures with other compatible sloth bears. The project also hopes that in future years newly rescued cubs could be released back to the wild in protected reserves.
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