In a unique initiative, volunteers — including veterinary doctors and bird lovers — and forest guards from the Department of Forests have come together to rescue birds which are injured during the three-day kite flying festival here around Makar Sankranti.
Around 900 birds get injured during the three days of festivities after getting entangled in the glass-coated thread or ‘manja’ as it is commonly known. The festival, scheduled from Wednesday, is very popular in the city and thousands of people fly kites.
About 40 volunteers and forest guards on Saturday decided to come together under the banner of Wildlife Alliance Jaipur, and form 10 groups that will rescue injured birds. The groups will spread out across the city and provide first aid and treatment. The kite and thread business is worth Rs. 8 crore.
Rock pigeons, black kites, rose-ringed parakeets, spotted owlets and barn owls suffer the worst. The injury from ‘manja’ is often fatal.
Nearly 10 camps are held in different parts of the city every year and almost 100 volunteers move around on motorcycles to rescue birds on receiving telephone calls. RAKSHA, the leading group, rescued 196 birds over three days at the last festival, said its president Rohit Gangwal.
For this year’s festival, Wildlife Alliance Jaipur is working at a better coordinated pace to be guided by its experts Pramod Yadav of Savors, Abhishek Singh of Angel-Eye, Jitendra Badgujar, Rakesh Mishra, and Joy Gardner of ICG and Nishant Shukla of TWSI.
S.N. Singh, Chief Wildlife Warden, Rajasthan, chaired the first workshop of the Alliance here. He asked S.P. Singh, Divisional Forest Officer-Wildlife, Jaipur, to depute forest guards to reinforce the rescue mission. A new protocol on scientific rescue and first aid is to be devised by Mr. Singh.
It is the first time that wildlife volunteers and the Forest department have initiated joint action to curb use of manja in kite flying. The government has already banned China-made ‘manja’ for use in Jaipur, which was the most dangerous. The authorities have banned kite flying during morning and afternoon hours, the period when most birds fly in the sky.
