Alipurduar, Jan. 18: Rasikbeel Pakhiralaya has been declared a community reserve.

The Union ministry of environment and forests has sanctioned Rs 48 lakh to Cooch Behar social forestry division for taking up projects involving the community to conserve the water bodies at the site and create helpful environment for migratory birds.

Three water bodies ? Atiamochor, Bochamari and Raichangmari Beel ? covering a total area of 178 hectares are a favourite resting-place of migratory birds. However, in the past couple of years, the number of birds arriving at Rasikbeel has come down from about 4,000 to 1,500, nature activists claim.

The government-funded projects aim to tackle one of the main reasons for this decrease in numbers, namely the indiscriminate hunting of birds and fishing in the lakes by local fishermen. ?A team from Delhi visited Rasikbeel recently and specified projects for the socio-economic uplift of the fishermen here and to involve them directly in the conservation of the water bodies as well as the protection of migratory birds,? said Pinaki Mitra, the Cooch Behar divisional forest officer. Accordingly, training programmes for better management of the lakes and pisciculture projects will be introduced under the new schemes.

Mitra said efforts are also on to remove the other threats to the birds. ?For the past few days, we have restricted the use of loud speakers by picnickers and polythene packets left by them are being collected daily to keep the place clean because these are the main reasons for fewer migratory birds visiting this place,? he said.

The new projects include construction of two watch towers, a 2-km stretch of road with a culvert and a community hall, apart from setting up 10 deep tube wells to provide pure drinking water to residents here.