Hummingbird News Desk
BURDWAN, 7 DEC: With the growing number of incidents regarding mysterious death of migratory birds in the Damodar riverbed in Burdwan, the State Forest department has woken up to address the issue on the suspicion that some poachers have been feeding poisoned baits to kill the birds.
The incident came to light after the members of ‘Burdwan Society for Animal Welfare’ collected the corpses of a pair of Rudy Shell Ducks, a pair of pond Herons and a River Lapwine yesterday from the riverbed and they handed over to the Divisional Forest authorities of East Burdwan for autopsy.
Kajol Biswas, Forest Ranger in Burdwan said: “We are sending the recovered corpses to Kolkata for better examination to help ascertain the reason behind the deaths of the migratory birds.”
At Borshul – about 10 km from Burdwan town, the migratory birds started flocking in since the last week of November. Somnath Nandi – a resident of Borshul first became suspicious about the bizarre death of the birds and informed the Society members. Yesterday, the Society members documented the ‘dead’ birds and submitted a report to the Forest authority.
Arnab Das, a member of the Society said: “We conducted a survey in the riverbed stretch between Amirpur and Borshul and collected five corpses. Also we’ve noticed that the frightened flocks have started shifting towards the upstream of the river near Kanchannagar.” This, he claimed: “Is a symptom that human hands were responsible behind the death of the birds.”
Nearly a hundred Cotton Teal Ducks were found mysteriously dead at Chupi Bird Sanctuary in Kalna in East Burdwan on 4 May, 2020. The Forest officials later detected that the birds were poisoned by some local farmers.
Nearly, 350 Rudy Shell Duck, 2000 Small Pratincole have been spotted this year in the Damodar river area. Also, the Society members claimed that four rare type of hunter bird called Osprey have been located in Damodar river area this year, which were spotted in Purbasthali bird Sanctuary last year.
Since yesterday, the Forest officials have started campaign using mikes along the Damodar riverbed giving caution that 5 to 7 years of imprisonment, besides cash penalty as per the provision of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.
Tags: #MigratoryBirds #DamodarRiverbed #Burdwan #RudyShellDucks #Herons #RiverLapwine
