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Indian flock of Siberian cranes is extinct

FILE PHOTO

GONE FOREVER: A pair of Siberian cranes at the Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur.

JAIPUR: Yet another flock of wild Siberian cranes is facing the threat of extinction with the Western flock, which visits Iran annually for wintering, reporting a lone bird this year. The central flock of Siberian cranes, which used to visit the Keoladeo National Park near Bharatpur in Rajasthan during winter months, is extinct already. The last pair of Siberian cranes was sighted in Keoladeo back in 2003. However, the good news is that the Eastern flock, which goes from Siberia to China, is flourishing. Their number could be anywhere between 3,000 and 4,000.

“The Indian flock is gone. Iran has a few birds. Five of them were spotted in southern Russia recently and another has turned up in Iran,” revealed George Archibald, leading crane conservationist and founder of International Crane Foundation, US.

“More than at the breeding grounds and at their wintering destinations, the cranes face threat from the countries they fly across such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he noted.

“Some time back the Western flock used to have 12 birds. We don’t know where the rest of the birds are now,” said Dr. Archibald making a presentation on the status of cranes the world over at a programme organised by the Tourism and Wildlife Society of India here.

“The crane population in the developing countries has increased. And there is also increased awareness on protecting cranes in China as well,” he pointed out.

“The Chinese claim that they have 4,000 Siberian cranes visiting but conservative estimates put the number around 3,000,” Dr. Archibald noted. “After the Tiananmen Square episode, guns were taken away from the common people and that helped the wildlife in the country,” he said. “Now Russia wants to do a Whooping crane experiment on the central flock of Siberian cranes. They want the revival of the flyway of the cranes to India using the micro-light aircraft experiment we had carried out in the case of Whooping cranes in the US,” Dr. Archibald said.

The Oka Natural Reserve in Russia has the maximum number of artificially bred Siberian cranes now.

In fact, Keoladeo had witnessed a similar cooperation on Siberian cranes in the late 1980s and the early ‘90s when the US, Germany and Japan joined together with the Indian authorities to leave artificially hatched chicks in the park to try out whether they would follow the wild cranes back home to Siberia.

“One dozen chicks were introduced in the park under this project though none of them could survive,” said Dr. Archibald.

Expressing concern over the present state of affairs in the Keoladeo National Park in the absence of water, Dr. Archibald said since the habitat was an artificial wetland, human intervention was needed to set right certain aspects. “As India has a lot of birds and considerable wildlife, perhaps the people here take them for granted,” he said jokingly on the conservation efforts -- or the lack of it in the country.

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