TAKING NOTE
A wildlife heritage we may lose
Baljit Singh

THE founding of Chandigarh, per chance, also coincided with the creation of the global movement for the conservation of nature. It was in 1959 that Racheal Carson published her book The Silent Spring. She came out with case studies of the life-destructive effects caused to the food chain and atmospherics by the unbridled use of chemicals across the USA and Canada. The US Senate and the world at large were at first stunned but soon they lauded her efforts. Sir Peter Scot later came with The Eye of the Wind in 1961 which focused on the expected extinction of a vast number of water-bird species due to habitat loss. And Sir Julian Huxley, an eminent zoologist, working from Africa warned the world through lectures and writings in the 1960s and 70s that there was a strong probability of the mass extinction of flora and fauna species in our lifetime.

By the 1970s the concerns propounded by these experts were universally accepted. But did these register with the builders of Chandigarh and its citizens and did they show any commitment towards preservation of the rich wildlife within the city and its surroundings? For instance, the entire area north of Sukhna Lake and the west of Panjab University was a splendid kikkar forest dotted with clumps of wild date palms. Both these trees were the favourite nesting sites of bayas (weaver birds). The baya looks handsome with its yellow plumage and dark mask. Its nest woven with soft green and brown grass and shaped like a champagne bottle, hangs from a branch with the mouth pointing down. In the earlier days, one could see as many as fifty of them on a single kikkar. By the 1970s, gone were these trees as well as the bayas from Chandigarh, sadly forever.

The male red jungle fowl with a rich brown, orange and metallic greenish black plumage and a harem of two to five hens could be commonly spotted in the vegetation between the lake and Chandigarh Club. Incidentally the Red Jungle fowl is the ancestor of all breeds of modern-day domestic poultry the world over, for 5,000 years! Today with luck you may just about sight and hear one or two birds north of the lake.

The peacock, our national bird, is holding out in modest numbers. They can be seen on the premises of the engineering college and in the thick woods around the High Court and the Legislative Assembly buildings.

In the 1950s when there were no compound walls but hedges only, it was not uncommon to sight a few sambhars. But the most delightful sights for those who cared were the rabbits nibbling your lawn at night. These animals do not exist in the city any more.

Sukhna Lake has become home to a vast variety of water fowl. Man-made waterbodies take at least a decade for the growth of algae and associated marine organisms which serve as food for the different species of water birds. So it was only in 1973 that Sukhna for the first time attracted 30 migratory birds. In the present times, the lake is home to thousands of birds, including geese, ducks, rails, coots, stilts and sandpipers. The resident species are cormorants, darters herons, egrets, plovers, harriers and terns.

Last year, interestingly, seven Great Crested Grebes visited the lake. But it was difficult to make out whether they came from Central Asia, Tibet or Ladakh. But the bird that deserves compassion and special care is the Indian Darter because it figures in the list of species that are globally threatened. We will lose these birds if silting of the lake is not prevented through upstream strategies rather than dredging the lake bed. If we follow the latter option, we can say goodbye to water birds for at least 10-15 years.

With luck you see in the green belts exotics like the Himalayan Whistling Thrush, The Great Himalayan Barbet, golden oriole, black bulbul, grey-headed canary flycatcher, White-capped redstart, and rufous-tailed wheatear to name a few. My list of birds seen at random in two years has logged over 100 species but in actuality there may be up to 400 species. Now if we want these birds to remain with us, we have to maintain the tree cover, keep adding more of those trees which attract birds and ban use of chemical spray on bushes, trees and in gardens. Any time I drive over the Udiyan Marg, I thank the man who created the most beautiful avenue of pilkhan trees (ficus infectoria). They have a magnificent canopy spread and provide the favoured food, roost and nesting niches especially to the yellow-legged green pigeons. You see these birds in flocks of 20 to 30 sunning on the leafless upper branches of semal trees from October to February.

Other birds that can be spotted in open spaces in northern areas are red-vented bulbuls, mynas (common, brahminy, pied & jungle) blue rock pigeons, robins (magpie and Indian) koel, ashy prinias, tailor birds, babblers, laughing doves, flycatchers (fantailed) purple sunbirds, grey hornbills, parakeets (Alexandrine and rose-ringed), green bee-eaters, hoopoes and rufous tree pies.

Wonder of wonders is that the house sparrow, which is declining at an alarming pace in the country, has since 2001 made a significant comeback in Chandigarh. Can we not make City Beautiful the living gene-pool of this bird which in the past has so richly adorned our folklore.

There are three wildlife sights and sounds which I would like to see restored to Chandigarh. First, I would again like to wake up to the calls of the grey partridge; second, I would like the evenings to be heralded by the piercing calls of jackals. And, I would also like to enjoy the sparkling dots of light pulsating on and off, weaving beautiful patterns in the dark of night as the fireflies and glow-worms glide about. This heritage may have gone from Chandigarh forever.