Karnataka   

An unusual Census under way

BANKAPUR: At 6.15 a.m. on Sunday, it was still dark at Bankapur Fort premises. Having attended a training session on Saturday evening, the volunteers from Bangalore, led by Harish Bhat of Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES) of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, were ready with their cameras to begin their work.

They had come to Bankapur to be part of a peacock census, a first of its kind initiative in the country. However lack of proper light had delayed their work.

Assistant Conservator of Forests, Ranebennur, S.N. Manavalli announced that they would wait for to begin the work. After collecting the names of the volunteers and forest guards and officials, Mr. Manavalli said that each volunteer would be accompanied by forest personnel.

“There are four transect lines in the conservation reserve, which have been divided into four routes and they have been marked by red flags. Each volunteer must look for peafowls in an area of 50 metres on the both sides of the transect line,” he said.

G.A. Ajay, a postgraduate in science from Kuvempu University, who is doing research on peafowls gave some last minute tips to the volunteers and the forest personnel on how to differentiate between peacocks and peahens. “A peacock has a small body and longer legs compared to the peahen. The juvenile peafowls will have a longer tail. During this period of the year, the peacocks usually shed their tail and so they will have smaller tails,” Mr. Ajay explained.

Manavalli announced that they would begin the census at 7.15 a.m. and asked the volunteers to take their position at the allotted transect line. Before they started, Mr. Bhat reminded the volunteers to look for the droppings of the peafowls, predators and note down the observations.

For the next two hours volunteers walked along the transect lines looking for the peafowls, noted down what they saw in the format given to them and even tried to take photographs without scaring away the animals.

Few journalists, environmentalists Madhuri Devadhar, and forest officials including Malavalli went around the peripheral areas as the volunteers slowly covered the transect lines.

When they returned with their findings, some were happy while a few were disappointed because they couldn’t spot too many of them.

After breakfast, there was an interaction on what the volunteers and the forest personnel felt, their observations and suggestions. Certificates of participation were handed over to the volunteers from the Forest Department.

Harish Bhat who headed the team of volunteers told The Hindu that the Sunday’s trial was the first in the series of similar trails to be conducted for the census. “After tabulating today’s observations and sightings, the next trial on the census will be planned. We are also planning to hold the census trials at different times during the day and also during other seasons to arrive at a figure,” he said.

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