Maaty Organization and ZSI, Dehradun Organizes a Bird Watching Programme
Every year, on February 2, the planet comes together to honour one of its most vital ecosystems: the wetlands. This date celebrated as the World Wetlands Day, marks the anniversary of the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar Convention), which was signed in Ramsar, Iran on February 2, 1971, to promote conservation and sustainable use of wetlands.
This year, the international theme for World Wetlands Day is ‘Wetlands and Life’. Wetlands are essentially areas where water covers the soil, or is present near the surface of the soil—be it all year, or even for varying periods during the year. Swamps, marshes, billabongs, lakes, lagoons, salt marshes, mudflats, mangroves, coral reefs, bogs, fens, and peatlands are all considered as wetlands. Wetlands can be natural as well as artificial. These ecosystems house all kinds of water—static, flowing, fresh, brackish, saline, you name it! While providing habitats and conditions for life to a broad variety of plant, fish, bird, and animal species, wetlands are also known to improve water quality, store floodwater, shield coastlines, support biological productivity, absorb pollutants, store land-based carbon, and maintain surface water flow during dry periods.
This year, World Wetland Day celebration was jointly organised by the Maaty Organization, Zoological Survey of India, and Alpine Group of Colleges on 2nd February to mark the 1st Ramsar wetland of Uttarakhand declared as ‘Wetland of National Importance’ on Ramsar Convention on Wetlands – ‘The Asan Conservation Reserve”. The Programme was started with the introductory talk from Dr. Himani Badoni, Project Scientist, Maaty Organization and the whole event was introduced along with a short description about Maaty Organization.
Following that, the event was officially inaugurated by Dr. Gaurav Sharma, Scientist, Zoological Survey of India who discussed the importance of this day and how the activity ‘birdwatching’ acts as a recreational movement but can help to document information’s regarding biodiversity and subsequent habitat and also improve our lifestyle.
After that, Dr. Ved Prakash Tiwary, Founder and Scientist, Maaty Organization acknowledged everyone and gave a short influential talk regarding the wetland and its importance and how this birdwatching event is correlated with saving this one of the world’s most fragile ecosystem. He also mentions that despite the age and class everyone should engage in such biodiversity documentation locally/globally so that it acts as a cursor to save
our wildlife and their habitats.
Dr. Anil Kumar, Scientist and bird expert, Zoological Survey of India was delivered a knowledgeful talk to the students about migratory birds and wetland. Later on, Ms. Oyndrila, Senior Research Fellow, Maaty Organization gave an outlook about how the event will proceed and divided the students into 4 different groups with the capacity of 10 each for 4 different habitats. Each group have few experts, who elaborated the facts about birds and wetland to students during the event. Student participation is significantly moved and they gathered and presented all the information regarding the birds out there, their behaviour and habitat very delinquently. Most influential field note documentation along-with drawing awarded ‘the best-bird watcher’ at the end of the programme to boost the youngsters so that they come forward in the future to save India’s biodiversity. Students of Alpine college have participated along with faculty members Mr. M D Kausar, Mr. Aamir, Ms. Vaishali Sharma
in it. A total of 70+ participants cum birdwatchers were there who took part in the event. The most common birds that are being documented were Ruddy Shelduck, Tufted Duck, Red-crested Pochard, Northern pintail, Painted Stork, Grey Headed Swamphen Common Coot, Common moorhen, Indian spot-billed duck, Grey heron, River Lapwing, Green Sandpiper, Egrets, kingfishers and cormorants etc.
In the end, Ms. Pratiksha, Senior Research Executive, Maaty Organization thanked everyone for participating in the event and introduce the online photography competition that was organized as a part of this celebration., Ms. Anupriya, Ms. Shefali, Mr. Mrityunjay, Ms. Divyanshi, Mr. Vishal, Ms. Shalini and Ms.Reshmi are the rest of the members from Maaty Organization who are involved whole-heartedly to make this event successful. During this
event, many photographs related to habitat and behaviour of birds was taken which will be very helpful for the documentation of the birds of Asan Conservation Reserve.
