World Wetlands Day Celebration at Okhla Bird Sanctuary
The Okhla Bird Sanctuary in NOIDA celebrated the International Wetland Day on 2nd February 2010, to mark the signing of the Ramsar Convention on protection of wetlands of international importance. The celebrations saw participation from residents and over 40 students from Delhi Public School, NOIDA. As an extension to this program, an awareness drive highlighting the decreasing population of cranes from the region was also organised.
In association with Nature Foundation (India), the Okhla Bird Sanctuary invited three different schools viz. Nehru International Public School, Sarla Devi DAV Public School and Bal Bhavan Public School, Mayur Vihar Phase-2, from which, a total of 110 students in all benefited from the program and enjoyed the bird watching organised around the sanctuary.
Mr. Gopi Sundar, member from Save the Cranes campaign addressed the students on the declining number of cranes and facilitated them in bird watching and in identifying different bird species that migrate to the Okhla Bird Sanctuary during the winter season. The major birds included Northern shoveler, black Ccot, Eurasian wigeon, etc.
Mr. Neeraj Kumar, District Forest Officer, was also present in the celebrations and spoke to children on the importance of wetlands. He also talked about the role being played by the Forest Department in conserving the sanctuary and the steps needed to be taken to preserve the biodiversity of the region in order to attract more and more relevant species in the near future.
Rakesh Khatri, Nipun Kaushik & Animesh Kapoor from Nature Foundation (India) also spoke to the students on the need and benefits of bird watching and also highlighting steps that can be taken to save the dwindling bird population in the entire NCR. The idea was to motivate the youth towards bird watching so as to developed it as a habit and a hobby.
The experience for the visiting students was nice which was well evident from the requests by them for letting them go into denser parts of the forest in their next visit.
CE Webster said,
February 9, 2010 at 5:40 am
A great and an educational event. We need to have more events like this to get the word out about the decreasing bird population. Thanks for the information.