Great Backyard Bird Count in Himachal Pradesh

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Shimla : 5th March ; alpha news india ;—–Himachal Pradesh Forest Department
participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count (GGBC) 2017. This is an event
that engages bird watchers from the general public in counting birds. The event
runs for 4 days every February and Indian birders have participated in GBBC
since 2013. The GBBC- India is coordinated by the Bird count India partnership,
a coming-together of number of Indian groups and organization that are
interested in birds, nature and conservation.
Participation in GBBC is open to all. It is
simple and involves birding for at least 15 minutes, listing and counting all the
species during the GBBC days. During 2017 event occurred from 17th
to 20th February. The birds listed are then uploaded to eBird (www.ebird.org), an internet-based platform for
recording and maintaining bird sighting data, based at the Cornell University’s
Laboratory of Ornithology.  

The annual snapshots of birds populations
obtained during GBBC help scientists in answering a number of questions such as
how birds are distributed across the country, how they are affected by habitat
changes and whether population and distribution are changing. And most importantly,
it engages and allows the general public to collect scientific data useful for
nature conservation, the reason why this event is termed as a Citizen-science
initiative.
In 2017, the Wildlife Wing, Himachal Pradesh
Forest Department took a pioneering initiative to participate in the GBBC. The
participation was carried out as a volunteers exercise and staffs of Wildlife
Wing along with few volunteers were indentified to contribute bird lists during
February 17-20, 2017. Mr S. K. Sharma, PCCF Wildlife and Chief Wildlife Warden
spearheaded this initiative. Lakshminarasimha R, zoo Biologist and Santosh
Thakur, Wildlife Guard coordinated the entire exercise by collating and
analyzing the data.
564 bird species are reported from Himachal
Pradesh as per data obtained from ebird, which is nearly 45% of the 1263
species found in India. Till date, 2833 bird check lists have been uploaded to
eBird from all districts of Himachal Pradesh, with highest number of species
(453 bird species) reported from Kangra district.
During four days of GBBC-2017, 319 species
were reported from across 8 districts in Himachal Pradesh. 83 bird check lists were
uploaded to eBird and over 16000 birds were counted. The data was contributed
by nearly 50 bird watchers including staff of the Himachal Pradesh Forest
Department and volunteers. A detailed report is in preparation and will be
published shortly.
Sh. S.K. Sharma PrCCF cum Chief Wildlife
Warden, Himachal Pradesh told that the Wildlife Wing intends to carry out such exercises
in future and participate in global events, especially citizen-science
projects, which will help in gaining an understanding of bird populations and
its distribution across the state.

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