With waterbodies in Tumakuru drying up, the breeding cycles of painted storks, migrant birds to the region, seem to be hit.
The storks come to Kaggaladu in Sira taluk to roost and nest in December from places in south Karnataka, like Kokkare Bellur in Mandya, Mysuru, and also from Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, and also Sri Lanka.
Usually, the birds stay till August and return home with the chicks.
They came here this season too but did not stay on to breed.
As ponds and tanks, in a 30-40 km radius of Kaggaladu, dried up owing to drought, the birds, which came in December, went back within a month without building nests, said Gundappa, chairman of the Wildlife Aware Nature Club.
Deputy Conservator of Forests V. Ramalinge Gowda endorsed this observation.
Straying into human areas
Besides the migrant winged creatures, the lack of food and water has also hit most of the animals, like sloth bears, leopards, monkeys, living in the forest areas in the region.
As they are straying into nearby human habitats, in search of food and water, man-animal conflicts are on the rise, observed Mr. Gowda.
With the land parched, most of the fruit-bearing trees and other sources of food have also dried up and this is driving the animals into villages and towns. Sloth bears barge into sericulture farms to eat mulberry fruits, he said.
Providing fodder
“We will plough a few acres of land and sow the seeds of horse gram, maize, hemata grass in 100 acres of forest land in Mydanahalli to provide fodder for blackbucks, and deers,” he said.
The Forest Department is planting mango trees, custard apple trees, and other fruit-bearing trees for the animals and to contain them in the forest areas.
The department has also taken up the restoration of waterbodies in the forest areas, besides pumping water from borewells to dried up lakes.
The total forest area in the district is 1,00,163.12 hectares, including the reserve forest area of 80,925.09 hectares, and the protected forest of 3,979.77 hectares.