In an attempt to sensitise people and improve conservation efforts, the Forest Department is coming up with yet another Green Partners’ initiative.
‘Give birds something to sing about’, a state-level strategic planning and capacity-building workshop to be attended by the most prominent names in bird conservation in the state, will be held at Ernakulam Government Guest House on Monday.
Excise and Ports Minister K Babu will inaugurate the workshop, which is being organised by the State Forests and Wildlife Department in association with the Centre for Wildlife Studies, KAU, SACON and KFRI.
The keynote address will be delivered by Prof P O Nameer, head of the Centre for Wildlife Studies, KAU. B S Corrie, PCCF (Social Forestry), will also speak.
The workshop will bring together various conservation groups -- the Cochin Natural History Society, Global Ocean India, KNS, Malabar Natural History Society, NEST, Turtle Club, TNHS, Waders and Warblers, WWF and other citizen bird conservation groups -- on a common platform to initiate a comprehensive and scientific approach to bird conservation and develop a citizen-centric institutional model for conservation.
The workshop aims to create awareness and gain support for conservation, undertake a comprehensive and scientific conservation initiative for birds, work with citizens to afford appropriate conservation support to birds outside forest, offer optimum nesting and breeding facilities to wildlife outside the forest areas.
Identifying and locating various sites and habitats utilised by birds for roosting, ascertaining various migratory species visiting the state and the period of visit, studying population dynamics of the various species, recognising the conservation initiatives of individuals, groups and providing a safe haven to visiting and migratory wildlife are also some of the objectives.
Development of a state strategic action plan, drawing more citizens towards conservation, standardisation of format for site specific plans, development of easy-to-use scientific protocols for conduct of inventory, documentation, population dynamics, conservation, protection and monitoring of efforts are some of the expected outcome from this initiative.
Creating a network of trained citizens capable of scientifically documenting and monitoring bird conservation efforts and setting up an institutional arrangement for comprehensive approach to bird conservation are also on the cards.