Wildlife Institute of India takes stock of wildlife around Jewar airport

GREATER NOIDA: The Wildlife Institute of India (WII) conducted a day-long consultation workshop on Saturday to prepare conservation plans for birds and animals that will be affected by the upcoming Jewar international airport.
Experts from the wildlife community, residents and environmental activists suggested several conservation steps for sarus and blackbuck habitats.

An animal rescue centre has been proposed keeping in view the potential increase in population in the area. Meanwhile, experts said smaller shallow wetlands should be restored so that the sarus cranes can move there along with developing ‘Sarus Mitras’, which helps increase the bird population and also protects their nests.
“Uttar Pradesh has an active society for protection of sarus crane and similar steps should be taken here as well. It’s important for the authorities to restore smaller wetlands that are home to sarus and the area being taken away should be adequately compensated. But, these small wetlands should be at least 10 kilometres away,” said Asad Rahmani, member of Governing Body of Wetlands International South Asia and former Director of Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS).
Rahmani suggested that locals could be motivated to protect Sarus nests. He said the restored habitats must be protected through minimum intervention. “There should be no garbage dumping around the airport as it attracts the birds,” he said.
At the workshop, waste management steps and future noise pollution levels were also discussed. While it was mentioned that blackbucks can be translocated, it disturbs their population. Also, during the construction phase, animals may enter the inhabited area and get killed. “We’ll discuss the proposal with YEIDA,” said PK Srivastava, divisional forest officer.
WII officials said all the suggestions will be incorporated in the final proposal for the airport. “While we have submitted our inception report to the government, our study is still going on. We needed to discuss all conservation efforts with the experts and stakeholders so that all suggestions can be incorporated,” said Dhananjay Mohan, director, WII.