world sparrow day march 20
Empty nests, hollow policies House sparrows are a veritable indicator of the state of ecological balance, or the lack of one, especially in an urban landscape. Subir Ghosh and Deepthi MR forage around and come to the conclusion that information about sparrows is far too scattered and scanty
For
the Bharadwajs, the mornings and evenings of those halcyon days would set in with the chirps of sparrows. But that was ages back. Ravindra Bharadwaj has reasons to fondly recollect the days of the sparrow. “When we spread rice and left it outside, they (the sparrows, of course) would come and clean it all up by devouring the insects. They would also act as de facto insecticides for plants,” says Bharadwaj, who has lived in the city for close to 40 years. But times have changed. One doesn’t get to see so many sparrows as one would earlier. The post-retirement refuge of yesteryears has burgeoned into a bustling metropolis, and with development has come the expected ravaging of the environs. The ecological balance in the city has been turned on its head. And a stark, and ironically almost nondescript, reminder of this is the disappearing sparrow. HS Sudhira, founder of conservation organisation Gubbi Labs, has an explanation for Bharadwaj’s observations. He points out, “There is something called the ‘hygiene theory’. According to this hypothesis, we understand that as we have turned to cleaner environments, the numbers of sparrows have come down. For instance, the way we used to buy products like rice and dals from gunny bags in provision stores. Sparrows would swoop into the stores and eat the rice from the bags, or if there was a little quantity of rice or dal outside, they would pick those too. But, now the grains come in packets of half kilo or one kilo in super markets. This has given them less scope of finding food sources.” That is, however, just one way of looking at things. The world over, populations of the diminutive, adorable and friendly house sparrow is dwindling. The august Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has noted that the numbers in the United Kingdom have dipped by as much as 62 per cent in the last quarter of a century. Common ecological sense should tell you that the situation is not that different in India. Except that you don’t have credible numbers to boost your claim. Says Mohammad Dilawar, founder of Nature Forever Society (NFS), “While in the West, monitoring (of sparrow counts) has happened for over 80 years now, it has not been done in India for such a long time. Ideally, it should have started at least 25 years ago.” Sudhira prefers a more prudent way of
ascertaining facts, “There are different speculations and hypothesis that we have come out with as part of learning about sparrows. However, to say if their numbers have increased or decreased is something extremely difficult to pinpoint. This is because, there is no historical data for it like in the West. Whatever data we have is only from 2007, which is relatively recent.” Yet, few people, either in Bangalore or even elsewhere, would dispute the fact that one gets to see fewer sparrows around one’s homes today than one would, say, 1520 years ago. After all, sighting a sparrow is not the same as spotting a tiger. In the case of the latter, just because you haven’t seen a tiger doesn’t mean that there isn’t one behind ready to pounce on you. Sparrows, one will agree, thankfully so, are different. There are other slightly disconcerting, slightly interesting aspects that need to be examined too. Says Sudhira, “We have found about 40 places (in the city) where we have since been able to map the presence of sparrows. They are mostly in lower income groups and areas like KR Market, Tilak Nagar, Yeshwantpur, and Sudham Nagar near Lalbagh. However, we dont find them near Jayanagar or Malleshwaram, which used to be their older hubs.” Gubbi Labs has been studying sparrows for a while. Conservationists, ornithologists and citizens alike have to go by empirical evidence, which undoubtedly points towards a decline in numbers. There is some broad consensus on the reasons for dipping sparrow counts. Bharadwaj believes, “With the invention of television and phones, electromagnetic waves in the environs have increased, reducing the numbers (of sparrows) immensely.” In fact, Bharadwaj’s observations are endorsed by most ornithologists. But as of now, with virtually no proper law to regulate erection or sustainable use of mobile towers, it is quite unlikely that this aspect can be tackled by anyone. Another possible reason is that of habitat itself. Due to modern technology, the spacious buildings of olden days have been changed to the shapes where sparrows do not find a habitat. You don’t get to see to many sparrow nests around your house. This is arguably one of the most important reasons behind this sparrow count decline. The loss of tree cover and urbanisation / urban development are other allied reasons. The tree cover of Bangalore has been declining proportionately with its sprawl-
ing development, as have the number of parks. As modern buildings, malls and industries gobble up tree cover, sparrow populations are bound to take a hit. Broadly speaking, the many reasons behind the insensitive and environment-unfriendly way of growth and development can be narrowed down to unplanned development. If the surrounding areas of Bangalore too are to be taken into account, modern agriculture certainly plays an important role in the decline in sparrow numbers. In modern agriculture, insecticides and pesticides are widely used which adversely affect all birds directly and indirectly. When sparrows feed on these types of fruits, the shells of their eggs are damaged. On the other hand, the numbers of insects too have gone down, affecting sparrows which feed on the larvae of insects. The damage wrought by insecticides therefore is two-pronged — on one hand, toxic elements are used in agriculture which lead to contaminated agricultural produce, and on the other, birds (in our case, sparrows) have to suffer a break in their food chain. Sparrows (or rather, the lack of them), to put it bluntly, become an indicator of how much human beings have plundered their environment. To put it in the context, if Bangalore’s depleting sparrow numbers
are a cause for worry, it should only mean that the city’s citizens have despoiled its natural resources beyond measure. That’s probably where the human intervention ought to come in. Yet, not everything is encouraging. On World Sparrow Day two springs back, Biodiversity Conservation Indian Limited (BCIL) and the Zoo Authority of Karnataka announced the launching of a website, gubbigoodu.in (a sparrow in Kannada is called gubbachi) to create greater awareness of the needs of this little bird that has graced homes and habitats for centuries. The site itself has disappeared from the Web. Dilawar is continuing with his braveheart effort. He says, “We are working towards including communities to participate in monitoring sparrow population. Societies have also become very individualistic where kids today are not very bothered about nature. We have to bring the awareness in them. Those interested in sparrows can log on to www.natureforever. org or www.cbmi.in and buy boxes for sparrows or even understand what their importance is.” Only if people would listen. Making policymakers listen would be a different ballgame altogether. subir.ghosh@dnaindia.net & deepthi.ranga@dnaindia.net