conservator Aparajita Datta gets Whitley Award

By: HP Wire May 3, 2013 17:33

New Delhi, May 3 (IANS) Conservator Aparajita Datta has won the Whitley Award, also called “Green Oscar”, for her work to save threatened hornbills in the forests of Arunachal Pradesh.

Datta is one of eight grassroots conservation leaders awarded a share of prize funding worth £295,000 by the Whitley Fund for Nature.

Datta leads a programme to conserve hornbills in the Eastern Himalaya at the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF), an NGO set up in 1996 to promote science-based wildlife conservation in India.

“Focussing on hornbills as a conservation flagship species, she is seeking to improve the status of the bird’s populations outside protected areas by establishing models of community-based conservation,” the Whitley Fund said.

“Datta is spreading knowledge of the needs of hornbills and their importance, as seed dispersers, in the maintenance of healthy forest ecosystems. Key to her approach is raising awareness of the threats to the bird’s survival, and creating a wider rural and urban constituency for conservation through a participatory community outreach programme that gets people involved,” said the fund.

Datta has been monitoring 60 hornbill nests in Arunachal Pradesh.

Datta will use the prize money to conduct surveys in Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland to figure out the status of hornbills. This will help to create an ideal model to conserve hornbills outside protected areas.

Princess Anne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth II, presented the award at a ceremony at the Royal Geographical Society in London Thursday. 

Green Oscar for Indian conservator

Green Oscar for Indian conservator

India's hornbill conservator Aparajita Datta has won a 'Green Oscar': the Whitley award.

Princess Royal Anne, daughter of the UK's Queen Elizabeth, presented the Whitley award, an international nature conservation prize, to Datta at a ceremony at the Royal Geographical Society in London in honour of the latter's work to protect threatened hornbills in the forests of Arunachal Pradesh.

Speaking to TOI in London, Datta said she would use the Rs 30 lakh prize money to identify hornbill nests across India and protect them from poaching and hunting.

"Hunting of hornbills is still rampant," Datta said. "Populations have been wiped out completely from some parts of India. We are looking at how to protect these magnificent birds outside protected area landscapes as hornbills are large mobile species."

Datta has been monitoring 60 hornbill nests in Arunachal Pradesh. "Before 2000, all species of hornbills lived alongside," she said. "Now for the first time, loss of habitat is causing direct competition between hornbill species for nest sites. We are asking common citizens to adopt nests. We have till now found 70 donors who have paid at least Rs 5,000 and adopted nests. I will use the Whitley award money to carry out surveys in Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland to access the real status of hornbills and what the ideal model to conserve hornbills outside protected areas would be."

India is home to nine species of hornbill. Arunachal, where Datta mainly works, hosts five species, including the globally endangered rufous-necked hornbill and the brown hornbill. The state is home to 26 tribes and most of them attribute differential values to different hornbill body parts, including the beak, meat, feathers and fat.

The Whitley awards, made annually by the Whitley Fund for Nature, honour exceptional individuals working in grassroots nature conservation. "The secret of the Whitley Fund for Nature is that they find exceptional grassroots conservation leaders," Princess Anne said. "Every winner has a close connection with their community, as well as experience and an understanding of the issues, which often relate to human-wildlife conflict, but they also know how to make an impact through practical solutions, engaging people and initiating change at government level. That's a rare skill."

Datta's project, 'Threatened hornbills as icons for the conservation of the Himalayan forests of Arunachal Pradesh, India', was among seven finalists, which also included community-based sea-turtle conservation in Bangladesh, protection of the endangered great apes of Ebo forest, restoring grasslands for the coexistence of Grevy's zebra and free-ranging livestock in Kenya, saving the Congo's last eastern lowland gorillas and protection of the Amur river basin and wetlands in China, Russia and Mongolia.

Crowned Hornbill breeding cycle – Part 1

by Hugh Chittenden

Of the 3 hornbills that inhabit forest habitats in southern Africa, Crowned Hornbill Tockus alboterminatus is the smallest and the only predominantly insectivorous species. This series documents its breeding cycle with Part 1 illustrating the early nestling stage.

Male crowned Hornbill feeding well developed chicks in a nest 

Nest

These hornbills require large enough tree cavities in which to raise 2 – 3 offspring and have enough room for the female to maneuver within the nest cavity. Nest entrance holes vary from narrow slits in tree trunks to natural round holes. The entrance hole is then partially sealed (leaving a narrow feeding slit).

Egg laying begins before the plastering process of the entrance tunnel has developed very far.

Incarceration and Moult

The female remains incarcerated in the nest for nearly two months, fed by the male. Soon after the female takes up residence in the cavity, and egg laying is complete, she undergoes an almost simultaneous moult of her flight and tail feathers. This is a critical stage in their breeding cycle because should something happen  to the male, she could break out of the nest but because she is flightless, would, without a doubt, perish.

Her droppings, mixed with some nest debris are used to close up the nest entrance, leaving a narrow feeding slit.

Once her flight feathers have grown (about half way through the nestling period), she breaks out the nest and the chicks re-plaster the entrance tunnel. She then helps the male with the demanding job of satisfying the ever-hungry growing chicks.

Crowned Hornbill chicks during the early stages of growth

The female leaves the nest about half way through the nestling period and amazingly, the chicks re-plaster the entrance tunnel themselves.
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