Open-bill storks at Kulik Bird Sanctuary. Picture by Nityananda Sarkar

Raiganj, July 2: The Bengal forest department is planning to set up a rescue centre and a laboratory in Kulik Bird Sanctuary as part of its attempt to arrest the slide in the population of migratory birds that go there to nest during the rainy season.

Ajoy Kumar Das, the divisional forest officer of Raiganj, said a large number of open-bill storks fly in from as far of as Pakistan and Mymanmar to nest on the tall trees of the sanctuary during the monsoon. “The birds leave with their young ones in January when they are fully fledged,” the forest officer added.

Das said observations made over the past few years suggest that fewer birds are coming to the sanctuary now. “The population of the other bird species like cormorants, night heron and egrets, most of which live in Kulik throughout the year, has also dwindled,” he said.

According to figures available with the forest department, the bird count in the sanctuary was 81,384 in 2003, 76,208 in 2004, 75,268 in 2005 and 63,300 last year. This year, around 15,000 birds have been counted so far.

The dwindling numbers have prompted the forest department to devise a strategy to bring the birds back to the sanctuary, said Das, and the rescue centre and laboratory are central to the plans.

“We want to treat and rehabilitate injured birds and fledglings and at the same time keep track of diseases that the storks might be bringing in with them,” said Das.

“In the past few years there have been storms and many birds, especially the open-bill storks and their young, have perished when strong winds uprooted the trees. We had no facility to treat the birds that survived and watched helplessly as they died,” the forest officer said.

Das added that in the past few years, the birds tended to nest on trees inside Raiganj town, causing problems to residents, because of loss of food sources at the sanctuary.

“We have recently de-silted the canal that runs through the sanctuary,” the forest officer said. “We have also introduced snails and other mollusc in the canal as they form the main diet of storks.”