Where are the ‘Sparrows’?

World Sparrow day: March 20

Aiming at creating awareness among people regarding House Sparrows, the Nature Forever Society of India, in partnership with several organisations, national and international initiated to celebrate World Sparrow Day since 2010.  The point has reached where House Sparrows are on the verge of extinction due to human activities.

Veterinarian and bird lover Dr Bahar Baviskar said, “Many plants depend on birds to disperse their seeds and sometimes a seed has to be digested and deposited by a bird before it will germinate. As the sparrow population is decreasing, tree plantation through the naturally process has gone down. We have to plant trees, now. Earlier, all this was done naturally.”

Dr Baviskar said further that development will affect these creatures but they know how to adopt changes, if given a chance.

“Concrete house have no place for Sparrows. At least what we can do is to installed Sparrow nets at our balcony, gardens etc, water pot and some grains to attract/help them,” opined Dr Baviskar.

It may be noted that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has Red List of Threatened Species founded in 1965 and has evolved to become the world’s most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biological species. It has found a decline of 50 per cent in their population.

Speaking and raising his concern over the same issue, Range Forest Officer of Gorewada Project Pandurang Pakhale said that sparrows have direct relation with humans. “They love to live with us and have been residing like this for generations.”

“Inorganic substances have been introduced in the food chain of Sparrows. Excessive use of insecticides resulted into decline in sparrow’s infant mortality rate. Because insects are part of newborn baby sparrow’s diet and due to excessive use of mosquito repellents and insecticides, sparrows are unable to feed them to their off-springs,” said Pakhale.

However several efforts across the country are underway to find out why the population of house sparrows has diminished and what measures can be taken to protect the bird species from extinction.