http://bnhs.org

We are pleased to inform all the readers that ENVIS Centre on Avian Ecology will be completing 15 years of establishment in 2010. Therefore, we decided to bring out a special BUCEROS issue on review of the activities carried out by the ENVIS Centre in last 15 years. This issue will also be used as a ready reference document of our ENVIS Centre.

About ENVIS

Realising the importance of Environmental Information, the Government of India, in December, 1982, established an Environmental Information System (ENVIS) as a plan programme. The focus of ENVIS since inception has been on providing environmental information to decision makers, policy planners, scientists and engineers, research workers, etc. all over the country. Since environment is a broad-ranging, multi-disciplinary subject, a comprehensive information system on environment would necessarlly involve effective participation of concerned institutions/ organisations in the country that are actively engaged in work relating to different subject areas of environment. ENVIS has, therefore, developed itself with a network of such participating institutions/organisations for the programme to be meaningful.

The Focal Point of the present 76 ENVIS centres in India is at the Ministry of Environment and Forests, New Delhi. This ENVIS Focal Point acts as a regional service centre to INFOTERRA (International Information System on Environment) set up by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), to cater to environmental information needs in the South Asian Region. As mentioned earlier, the Centre at the BNHS has been assigned the responsibility of being the focal point for information on ‘Avian Ecology’.

Inauguration of the ENVIS Centre on Avian Ecology and Inland Wetlands, BNHS

The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) was selected as an Environmental Information System (ENVIS) Centre for avian ecology and inland wetlands by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Government of India during the year of Sàlim Ali centenary year celebration. Inauguration of the ENVIS Centre was done at BNHS by Mr. N.R. Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests on June 18, 1996. The choice of BNHS for such a centre is understandable, as it has been related in one way or another with studies on ornithology, natural history and conservation and India’s father of ornithology, Dr. Sàlim Ali.

Objectives of the ENVIS Centre on Avian Ecology:

1) To create a bibliographic database of published work related to avian ecology study. This need to access the information from scientific papers, notes, project reports, theses, books, bulletins and popular publications, internet & other authenticated sources.

2) Publish and distribute BUCEROS newsletters on Avian Ecology to near about 700 members as in Table 1 (Page 6).

3) To create and upload databases on avian ecology on ENVIS website.

4) To reply to queries on the subject area.

Volume 1, No. 1, 1996

BUCEROS newsletter publications at a glance

BUCEROS newsletter distribution coverage Abbr used:

Database mainatainence at ENVIS Centre on Avian Ecology

Other databases available

A database on Inland Wetlands had been developed in the early days of ENVIS. It contains about 5165 references related to wetland areas of India. However, the database has been discontinued since 2004 as it was removed from the thematic area.

The MoEF has provided monetary assistance under its Environment Management Capacity Building Technical Assistance Project (EMCBTAP) scheme to create website and collect, collate and disseminate information through internet. In this regard, we developed our own website for the ENVIS department in 2003.

In 2008, the Ministry joined hands with the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and all the existing ENVIS centres were provided domain name, email ID and adequate web space on the NIC server. In 2009, we translated our website into regional languages, Hindi and Marathi, with the intention to broaden the Centre’s reach among non English-speaking masses.

All the BUCEROS issues (See Page 4 & 5) and the databases (See Page 6) developed by ENVIS Centre are available on ENVIS website in easily accessible format. Information such as history of Indian ornithology, important bird projects of India, basic information on Avian Ecology is available. Data view - Endemic birds of India

Other information such as kids corner (specifically designed for the kids), network of the other ENVIS Centers, Journals and websites related to bird studies is available along with the links to www.birdlife.org for species fact sheet,

www.worldbirds.org for bird checklist data,

http://orientalbirdimages.org for photo gallery.

New initiative - Bustard Forum (Launched in July 2010)

Using internet as a perfect platform, ENVIS Centre, BNHS has launched a web-based “Bustard Forum” on www.bnhsenvis.nic.in under the supervision of Dr. Asad Rahmani, Project Coordinator, ENVIS Centre and Director, BNHS. ENVIS team has collected all the available references on bustards from BNHS library, internet & through personal communication. News and sighting records of the bustards provided by observers have been posted in chronological order. It is open to all. In future we are planning to launch more interactive forum for threatened birds of India.

Link: http://www.bnhsenvis.nic.in/bustardforum.html

Climate change impacts on the conservation of birds in Asia

This project is a global initiative by the BirdLife International, the Royal Society for Protection of Birds (RSPB) and Audubon of UK to create a web based network to provide platform for the collection, storage and retrieval of bird observations worldwide. Through a global ‘family’ of databases, each country has its own system linked to the map portal at www.worldbirds.org which allows users to choose a country and submit their bird observations, making a valuable contribution to bird conservation on a local, national and international scale. Important Bird Area (IBA) team at BNHS is coordinating the information from Indian region and ENVIS Centre is an active participant of this project.

Vulture advocacy programme – South Maharashtra

The vulture advocacy programme is one of the leading projects of BNHS. There is urgent need to make people aware about the decline of vultures in India. Therefore ENVIS Centre undertook initiative to assist the Vulture Advocacy Programme for south Maharashtra. A network of NGOs was established in south Maharashtra for vulture monitoring and advocacy purpose. These NGOs collected vital information about the status of the vultures in four districts of south Maharashtra. They also carried out various awareness programmes through newspapers and local cable TV network. We were able to document good information about the status of the vultures in this area.

City and industrial Developmental Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO) and BNHS biodiversity project

The CIDCO and BNHS jointly worked on CIDCO Biodiversity Park Project. Aim of the project was to
conserve wildlife in 1200 hectares of forest in New Mumbai. The ENVIS centre provided complete technical support such as bird monitoring and census techniques, project implementation and conservation measures. Considerable information on the birds of Navi Mumbai was documented during the project.

The New Odyssey Project

ENVIS Centre actively participated in “The New Odyssey Project”, an international collaboration with Czech Radio and BNHS. The ENVIS Centre at BNHS provided vital information about the Black Stork Ciconia nigra which led the Czech scientists to locate the storks in Maharashtra. The team of scientists successfully trapped two Black Storks in 2007 and one in 2008 and released them unharmed after fitting a satellite transmitter.

These storks were monitored via satellite since December 2007. During the above mentioned survey, a series of talks were held at the local educational institutes and copies of BUCEROS were distributed to the local academicians. Information on the migratory route of the birds and possible effect of climatic factors can be collected through this project.

• 2002: Strategies and implementation mechanisms for ENVIS wide area network programme, jointly organized by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Government of India and National Ship Design & Research Centre (NSDRC) in Visakhapatnam.

• 2006: National Workshop for the ENVIS Centers organised at State Council for Science, Technology &
  Environment, Himachal Pradesh at Shimla.

• 2007: Nuclear Power Corporation India, Ltd. (NPCIL) and Indian Bird Conservation Network (IBCN) Workshop in June 2007. Talks on threatened birds of India and on avian ecology study were given.

• 2007: National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) and Indo US initiative on Eco-forecasting Workshop. The workshop covered subjects such as database handling, linking database with Global Biodiversity Informatics, various mathematical models for Eco-forecasting. These techniques were found to be useful in enhancing the functioning of the
• ENVIS Centre.

• 2007: Regional evaluation workshop of ENVIS Centres of Western region, held at Population ENVIS Centre, Deonar, Mumbai in October 2007.

• 2008: Seminar on Indian State-level Basic Information Database (ISBEID) for ENVIS Centres, held at Population ENVIS Centre, Deonar, Mumbai in October 2008.

• 2009: International Conference ‘Conserving Nature in a Globalizing India’ held in February 2009, by BNHS in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore.

• 2009: ENVIS project evaluation workshop conducted by the MoEF in March 2009 at Almora, Uttarakhand. It was decided that importance of the climatic change and its effect on avian ecology needs to be assessed.

• 2009: Strategic Planning Workshop of the BNHS at Kashid, held in September 2009.

• 2009: Annual research seminar (ARS) of the BNHS, held in September 2009.

• § 2009: Statistical Workshop conducted by Dr. Qamar Qureshi, Wildlife Institute of India (WII) at Hornbill House, Mumbai in September 2009. Traning on basic statistcis was provided to the participants.

• 2010: ENVIS Project Evaluation Workshop conducted by the MoEF in April 2010, at Gangtok,
  Sikkim.

• 2010: Marine Important Bird Areas (IBAs) Workshop held in September 2010. India will be
  the first to start identifying marine IBAs with this workshop in South Asia. Through this brainstorming workshop a plan was developed for identification of marine IBAs in India. ENVIS Centre will provide relevant information from the published literature.

• 2010: Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) Workshop on Biodiversity Data Discovery and Publishing, WII, Dehradun in May 2010. GBIF was established in March 2001, as an open ended international coordinating body to promote compilation, linking, standardization, digitization and dissemination of world’s biodiversity data in the form of distributed open access system, within an appropriate framework for property rights and
  due attribution.

• 2010: ENVIS staff participated in a criticall endangered bird Forest Owlet, Recovery plan
  Workshop organised by the BNHS.

• 2010: Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS), Predictive Analytics Statistics Software (PASW), Faculty Development Programme (FDP) on Research and Data Analysis Using SPSS 18.0, organized by Department of Physical Education, University of Pune, Pune in collaboration with SPSS on 22nd and 23rd October, 2010. Workshop covered the basics of the statistics and use of SPSS tool for data analysis.

Wetland survey (1997-98)

In an effort to document the lesser known wetlands of our country, the ENVIS Centre at the BNHS commissioned a survey to collect baseline data on some of these wetlands. As a beginning, we conducted a pilot survey of the wetlands of Chengalpattu, Ramanathapuram and Kanniyakumari districts of Tamil Nadu during 1997-1998.

Visit by MoEF team (2005)

In February, 2005 expert team from the Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF) had visited ENVIS Centre at BNHS regarding the Environmental Management Capacity Training Assistance Project (EMCBTAP), financially supported by the World Bank. ENVIS staff provided all the relevant information on functioning of the Centre to this team.

Avian Influenza survey (2006)

A preliminary survey of Avian Influenza was carried out in Nashik, Aurangabad and adjoining areas of Maharashtra from where the Avian Influenza was reported. Simultaneously, bird monitoring was carried out in Sewri and Uran areas near Mumbai for the MoEF funded “Avian Influenza Surveillance Project”.

Great Indian Bustard (GIB) Census (2007-08)

Staff of ENVIS Centre participated in GIB Census carried out by the Forest Department of Bustard Sanctuary, Maharashtra.

Visit to ENVIS Centre, Department of Environment, Government of Maharashtra (October 2008)
ENVIS-BNHS staff visited the ENVIS Centre of the Department of Environment, Government of Maharashtra to discuss improvements in website and functioning of the Centre.

Visit to selected IBAs of the Maharashtra (September 2009)

Selected IBAs of the Maharashtra from Nashik, Ahmednagar and Solapur districts were visited for assessment of the current status of the areas.

BNHS Flamingo Festival (March 2010)

Active participation in organizing “BNHS Flamingo Festival 2010”: ENVIS staff provided all the scientific information on flamingos for the preparation of brochures, banners, panels. Also, we answered queries posed by members, media during the flamingo watch.

Visit to Important Bird Areas (IBAs) of Sikkim (2010)

Staff of ENVIS Centre visited IBAs of Sikkim with the help of Mrs. Usha Lachungpa, Sr. Research Officer, (WL), Sikkim Forest Department and Indian Bird Conservation Network (IBCN) state coordinator of Sikkim.

Visit to Vulture Conservation Breeding Centre (VCBC), Raja Bhatkhawa (2010)

ENVIS staff visited VCBC and Buxa Tiger Reserve, West Bengal on 12-13th April 2010. Mr. Sachin Ranade, Centre Manager, VCBC provided all technical and scientific information about the functioning of VCBC.

Visit to Rajaji National Park (2010)

ENVIS staff visited Rajaji National Park along with Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) workshop participants on 8th May 2010. The trip was arranged by WII staff.

Great Indian Bustard (GIB) Survey in Solapur & Osmanabad districts (2010)

Conservation issues and threat to the Great Indian Bustard Ardeotis nigriceps, an endangered and endemic to India and Pakistan awere discussed with staff of the Forest Department as well as local people during this survey. Concern was shown over the development versus wildlife conservation issue.

Preparation of GIB conservation management plan (November 2010)

Great Indian Bustard conservation management plan was prepared for he proposed Solapur Super Thermal Power Project (STPP), National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) Ltd.

Wildlife week: The ENVIS centre carried out a special programme during wildlife week in October
2007. We developed posters of Globally Threatened Bird Species. This poster exhibition was viewed by more than 2000 individuals of various age groups. The main focus of this exhibition was awareness among people and children.

Basic Ornithology Workshop for promotion of Thematic Area (2008)

The ENVIS centre, Pugmark Art Gallery, Maharashtra State Forest Department (Wildlife) and Green Guards jointly organized a “Basic Ornithology Workshop” at Kolhapur. Along with students guards and range forest officers of Maharashtra Forest Department also attended this workshop. subjects such as bird taxonomy, bird behaviour, migration, bird human interaction and bird conservation in India were covered.

Global Bird Watcher’s Conference (GBWC) at Jamnagar, Gujarat (2010)

ENVIS staff attended a three-day Global Bird Watcher’s Conference, organised by the Gujarat Tourism Board, from 25-27 November 2010, at Khijadiya, Jamnagar, Gujarat, for promoting ENVIS activities.

1) ENVIS Project Awareness

Awareness regarding ENVIS project in all possible ways such as articles in magazines, newspapers
etc. as above will be carried out

2) To encourage public participation in strengthening of the bird checklist data in India using WorldBirds portal

BirdLife International is a global partnership of conservation organisations that strives to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, working with people towards sustainability in the use of natural resources. This is the world’s largest partnership of conservation organisations. BirdLife International, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB, UK) and Audubon (USA), have established a vast source of bird and environmental information generated by general birdwatchers and professionals alike. Every year, millions of people around the world go out bird watching for fun. Many keep notes on what they have seen, and these data are extremely valuable for conservation at all levels - from local site protection to national and international policy-making. It is impossible for conservation organizations to visit all areas for all species, and members of the public can help fill in the gaps. An unimportant sighting of a common species can be used to build up a bigger picture - every observation has value! The WorldBirds project brings together a ‘family’ of systems to collect data on birds. WorldBirds vision is to create a network of Internet systems that provides a platform for the collection, storage and retrieval of bird observations worldwide. The www.worldbirds.org portal allows anybody to choose a country and submit their bird observations, thus making a valuable contribution to bird conservation on a local, national and international scale.

In India, a majority of people either do not know or have access to the internet and those who use the internet often do not know where to get proper information. Therefore uploading bird sightings on such portals is usually carried out only by a limited number of users. As an ENVIS Centre on Avian Ecology, we would like to publicize this programme of public participation in strengthening of the bird checklist data in India using WorldBirds portal. We are planning to extract, verify and compile the locationwise bird checklists using the WorldBirds portal and to publish it in the form of booklets. Such booklets shall be distributed among those who are not using internet regularly Awareness regarding ENVIS project in all possible ways such as articles in magazines, newspapers etc. as above will be carried out and in return, data about the local birds will be collected for uploading on the WorldBirds portal. Through such information exchange, both the portal as well as local people will mutually benefit in terms of strengthening the bird knowledge. This project will serve the purpose of bird conservation awareness programme and preparation of the bird checklists through public participation.

It is important that as many people as possible engage in the WorldBirds project and enter any bird data they have. From the table 4 it can be seen that a good start has been made but India is still behind much smaller countries in Asia in terms of usage of the system.

3) Development of database of migratory birds of India.

4) Development and maintenance of database on climate change and effect on avian ecology.

5) Collaboration with partners like Indian Bird Conservation Network (IBCN) and BirdLife international to develop network and to strengthen the databases.

6) Up gradation of online databases for quick search facilities and to provide over all dynamicity of the website.

7) Conduction and participation in various workshops for promotion of thematic area. This activity is dependent on the availability of funds.

8) Work on Bustard Forum as an initiative of compilation of information on all threatened bustard species of India for their better conservation plan.

9) Highlighting success stories of the bird conservation through website and newsletter.

ENVIS Team
Center- In-Charge         Mr. J. C. Daniel (From 1996 till date)

Project Coordinator        Dr. Asad R. Rahmani (From 1998 till date)

Scientist-In-charge        Mr. Sujit Narwade (From 2008 till date)

Information Officer        Mr. Sagar Satpute (From 2008 till date)

Research Officer           Ms. Divya Varier (From 2008 till date)

Data entry Operator      Ms. Tejashree Nakashe (From 2010 till date)

Staff who served for a year or more in the ENVIS Centre

Ms. Madhavi Inamdar (1997-2000), Dr. Ranjit Manakadan (1996-97 & 1999-02), Dr. V. Natarajan (1997-98), Dr. S. Alagarrajan (1999-2000), Dr. Ashok Verma (2001- 2003),Dr. G. Maheswaran (2001-04), Mr. N.Sivkumaran (2000-01), Dr. Girish Jathar (2004-08), Mr. Sujit Narwade (2004-06), Ms. Kavita Mallya (2007-08).

Without the support, patience and guidance of many people from MoEF and BNHS, the Centre would not have completed 15 years. We would like to express our deepest gratitude to Dr. Asad R. Rahmani for rendering constant encouragement to us.

We thank Mr. Hemant Surekar for his contribution in website designing and many photographers for providing the bird photographs for website and publications.

We owe a particular debt of gratitude to the entire staff of the Bombay Natural History Society, for providing infrastructure, resources and guidance thereby ensuring the smooth functioning of the Centre.

We also wish to thank Mr. Naeem Ahmed, Technical Director, NIC and his team as well as Mr. Amit Bhandari & Mr. Ravi Goswami from ENVIS Cell of MoEF for their generous support. Finally we are most thankful to Shri Nilkanth Ghosh, Statistical Advisor, Mrs. Madhumita Biswas, Joint Director, Dr. P.S. Rawat, Deputy Director, Dr. S.P. Sharma, former Statistical Advisor, Dr. S. Annadurai, former National Programme Co-ordinator, ENVIS Secretariat, MoEF for providing continuous support to run the ENVIS Centre on Avian Ecology, BNHS.