Humans teach Siberian cranes to return to India

In one of the most ambitious projects in conservation history, bird experts are teaching Siberian cranes to fly back to Bharatpur, Rajasthan.

Bharatpur is the birds’ centuries-old wintering ground, where they have not been sighted since 2002. The Siberian crane population vanished from the Central Flyway route in Siberia, which leads to India, due to ecological turbulences along the flight path.

To reinstate the traditional flyway, ornithologists around the world devised a method to bring back the young brood of the migratory species to India. A hang-glider was painted to mimic a Siberian crane and a pilot tried to lead a flock of young, captive-bred Siberian crane chicks along a part of their traditional Central flyway route.

Though travel through the full migration route was not attempted, the chicks reached Uzbekistan, nearly halfway to their destination in India. That is where the project has stalled.

“We are not able to find enough stopovers for food and satisfactory habitation for the cranes, so it is getting difficult to continue through Afghanistan and Pakistan,” said Gopi Sundar, a research associate with the International Crane Foundation.

The body undertook the project in 2002 with the All Russian Research Institute for Nature Protection. “However, this is only a temporary lull. We hope to resume the project soon,” Sundar said.

This bold initiative is an adaptation of a programme that used an ultralight aircraft, which has shown promise for the endangered Whooping cranes of the United States.

Sundar said it was critical to ensure that the Siberian cranes’ habitats were conserved all through their route, spanning Russia, Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. “Siberian cranes were hunted in Afghanistan. In other countries, the wintering grounds they used as stopovers have not been conserved properly. Birds die if they don’t get sufficient food at regular intervals, which is what happened to the Sibes,” Sundar said.

Wetlands International in Asia works with the countries concerned to spread awareness about Sibe conservation. Coordinator for the Asian Waterbird Census in Wetlands International-South Asia, Dr Bharat Jethva, said, “This critically endangered species is now only found in two populations, the eastern and western.” He said the central population of the cranes once nested in western Siberia and wintered in India.

For ornithologists, it is an ambitious yet forlorn thought to bring back the Sibes to Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur. “We don’t know if the gorgeous cranes, whose eminence continues to attract lakhs of tourists, will ever return to India, but this ambitious project is the need of the hour,” said the director of BNHS, Dr Asad Rahmani.