Shared parenting

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88 T H E H I N D U S U R V E Y O F T H E E N V I R O N M E N T 2 0 1 2

I

t was March 2004 and the forest was hot and

dry, even in the foothill forests of Pakke Tiger Reserve in Arunachal Pradesh. The majestic Tetrameles nudiflora (Bhelu) tree was flowering and leafless.

High up on its main trunk was an oval-shaped cavity, left behind when a large branch had bro-ken off. Over time, the cavity had been adopted as a nest by a pair of breeding Wreathed hornbills. Eight of every ten hornbill nests here are on Bhelu trees. We had found this nest way back in 1997. And every year since then, a Wreathed hornbill pair had used it.

That day in March 2004, things changed; we

were out in the forest checking all the hornbill nests we had discovered, to see whether nesting had been initiated. Suddenly, we saw a pair of Great hornbills flying around the Wreathed horn-bill nest. They chased the Wreathed hornhorn-bill pair who were cleaning out the cavity to initiate nest-ing for the year. This strife continued for several days. The Great hornbill pair did not nest that year, although they hung around the tree and called frequently.

The Wreathed hornbill pair could not nest either, and the cavity remained unused that year. The following year, it was used for nesting by the Great hornbill. We had witnessed our first nest

Shared parenting

A programme to adopt hornbill nests in Arunachal Pradesh is

giving these great birds a chance to survive in Pakke,

say

Aparajita Datta

,

Amruta Rane

and

Tana Tapi.

A brown hornbill male on a feeding visit to the nest in a reserve forest in Miao, eastern Arunachal Pradesh. This co-operatively breeding species has a restricted distribution in lowland forest

mainly in eastern Arunachal and upper Assam. PHOTO: RAMKI SREENIVASAN/CONSERVATION INDIA

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90 T H E H I N D U S U R V E Y O F T H E E N V I R O N M E N T 2 0 1 2 takeover. This was our first evidence that suitable

cavities for nesting were limited and that hornbill pairs competed for them.

Another first happened that year. We found a pair of Wreathed hornbills nesting on an Ailan-thus grandis (Borpat) tree by the roadside. That tree had a cavity that we had always thought was suitable for hornbills, but prior to this, we had never seen it being used. A Tetrameles tree in a sal plantation close to habitation was also used by Wreathed hornbills.

On yet another Tetrameles tree with a cavity, which was partially smothered by a strangler fig, we watched a pair of Great hornbills inspecting and cleaning, and finally the female entering and sealing the cavity to spend the bulk of the nesting season incarcerated. Again, we had watched this tree every year thinking it could be a potential nest tree, but hornbills had never used it earlier.

These observations left us wondering why hornbills were starting to use ‘sub-optimal' cav-ities that they did not seem to care for earlier.

Between 1995-2005, there had been massive

deforestation in the forests of Sonitpur district in neighbouring Assam. Over 300 sq. km adjoining Pakke's forests had been lost. This forest was ideal habitat for hornbills. Several hornbill nest trees that we found between 1997 and 2000 were in these reserve forests in Assam. They were all gone by 2001. There had also been degradation of the reserve forests outside Pakke from anthropogenic activities.

In a study between 1997 and 2000, we had observed that all three common hornbill species, the Wreathed, Great and Oriental Pied hornbills used mainly Bhelu trees for nesting (another spe-cies, the endangered Rufous-necked hornbill, oc-curs mainly in higher elevation areas). But there were fine-scale differences in the kinds of cavities selected, with cavity size, location and shape being different. And we had never seen direct competi-tion for nest cavities among the three hornbill species.

But things had changed.

Since 2005, we have observed several more instances of nest takeovers between hornbill

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cies, with Wreathed hornbills taking over Orien-tal Pied hornbill nests and Great hornbills taking over Wreathed hornbill nests. In two instances, we found that both Wreathed and Oriental Pied hornbills used different cavities on the same tree! It became apparent that due to the shrinking of their habitat in Assam, hornbills were facing a shortage of nest cavities and these instances of direct competition for nests were the outcome. Hornbills do not make their own nest cavities, and are ‘secondary cavity-nesters' with a pro-longed breeding season when they remain vul-nerable to disturbances.

In 2003, the Nature Conservation Foundation had initiated a long-term nest and roost monitor-ing programme in Pakke. Most of the nests we have monitored since 2003 were inside the Pakke Tiger Reserve and there has been no further loss of nest trees inside, although, all known nests are not active every year and active nests are abandoned occasionally or breeding is unsuccessful for other

reasons. The percentage of successful nesting in most years is 80-100 per cent of active nests.

Since 2003, we had also monitored 7 nest trees outside Pakke in the Papum Reserve Forest. Their success was highly variable and in some years the breeding pair would abandon the nest trees mid-way, resulting in unsuccessful nesting, while in other years, the nests remained inactive. Ultimate-ly, all of them fell to the axe.

Out of the total 62 trees we had monitored from 1997 to 2010, 12 had got cut down. All were in the Reserve Forest. Apart from their nesting trees, countless hornbills must also have fallen to the gun.

Yet, these Reserve Forests outside cover a large area (> 1000 sq. km) and are important habitat for hornbills and need to be protected better. We tend to consider only Protected Areas as being important for wildlife, and disregard surrounding forest habitats as ‘sinks' not worth too much attention.

The field team in Pakke - young nest watchers, the gaonburras (some of whom are also nest watchers and Ghora-Aabhe

members), the DFO of Pakke, Tana Tapi and NCF’s project co-ordinator Amruta Rane. PHOTO: APARAJITA DATTA

Between 1995-2005, there had been massive deforestation

in the forests of Sonitpur district in neighbouring Assam.

Over 300 sq. km adjoining Pakke's forests had been lost.

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We felt the need for finding a way to protect nests outside the park in the adjoining reserve forest, include villagers in the conservation effort and expand the scope and impact of the program for long-term conservation of all the hornbill spe-cies in the area.

Hunting and habitat loss are severe threats to hornbills in North-east India. Till 2002, there was frequent hunting of hornbills in Pakke and its surrounding forests, although the Nyishi had al-ways followed a traditional ban on hunting during the breeding season which is followed in many other areas in Arunachal.

As a result of increased awareness among the local Nyishi community and efforts to substitute real hornbill beaks with fiberglass beaks (an initia-tive of the Wildlife Trust of India and the Aru-nachal Pradesh Forest Department), the villagers around Pakke had publicly banned hunting of hornbills year-round since 2002.

From 2003 onwards, the Nyishi community around Pakke has slowly changed its attitudes to wildlife conservation.

In 2006, wildlife protection efforts further ex-panded in the area. Among other initiatives, the

Ghora-Aabhe was formed. This is a council of village headmen (supported by the Arunachal Pra-desh Forest Department) who are trying to ensure compliance of the locally imposed hunting ban on all wildlife.

This was a remarkable initiative in many ways – the headmen of 14 villages were convinced to become conservation partners with the Forest De-partment in protecting wildlife and helping create awareness among other villagers.

Over the years, Pakke had gained a reputation as a haven for hornbills and indeed it remains the best place in north-east India for four sympatric hornbill species.

While the threat of hunting declined and the protection system got strengthened and hornbills and their nest trees remained relatively safe inside Pakke, hornbill habitats outside continued to rap-idly disappear.

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94 T H E H I N D U S U R V E Y O F T H E E N V I R O N M E N T 2 0 1 2 Adoption Program in Thailand seemed a great

way forward.

The idea was to engage and bring together two sets of distant people united by the common de-sire to conserve, local and urban. The local com-munity contributes by searching for, monitoring and protecting nests in the forests around their villages while the urban community contributes by supporting the program financially, assisting as volunteers and occasionally as visitors.

The idea is simple. Concerned urban individu-als adopt a hornbill nest at a cost (Rs. 5,000). They, in turn, receive information about the sta-tus of the nests and what happened to the horn-bills that nested in a given year.

The money raised through their generosity is used for partly employing a few villagers to pro-tect nests and a share of the funds is also provided to the Ghora-Aabhe at the end of the breeding season for village welfare and development activities.

This system results, remarkably, in each horn-bill chick ending up having three sets of parents! Their biological parents who feed and take care of them, another set of parents belonging to the sur-rounding villages that watch over their nests and protect them from harm, and a third far-away set of parents who help to financially sustain this program.

In February 2011, we had initial discussions with the Ghora-Aabhe members to gauge their interest and willingness to participate. We asked interested members of the Ghora-Aabhe to start by locating new nests near their villages in the breeding season of 2011 (March to July).

By May, Tajek Wage, Pahi Tachang and Bud-hiram had found nine nests (3 Great hornbill nests, 4 Wreathed hornbill nests and 3 Oriental Pied hornbill nests). Tajek Wage in his enthusi-asm visited all the nests he found to check on them all through the breeding season, even though we had not asked him to monitor the nests daily. The birds exited from the nests by the 2nd week of July.

In June, the Nature Conservation Foundation, Ghora-Aabhe members and the Forest

Depart-ment finalized an agreeDepart-ment to initiate the pro-gram fully from the breeding season of 2012. The three partners have clearly specified roles and the agreement has been signed for 3 years.

We decided to involve all nine villages along the southern boundary of Pakke Tiger Reserve in this effort. This seemed a great way to start, but we were not sure if it was going to be easy.

However, Takam Nabum (Chairman, Ghora-Aabhe) took charge and by November had in-formed all the villages and they had meetings to select a person from each village who would be the ‘Nest protector'.

An educated Nyishi youth was also selected to be the local field co-ordinator. On November 28, 2011, all the nest watchers signed a formal confir-mation for participation in the program. The nest watchers are a mix of old, experienced people with knowledge of the forest (veterans like Tajek Wage and Pahi Tachang) and of younger men. They agreed to a salary of Rs. 3000 per month for eight months (January to August), which encompasses the entire breeding season.

Hornbills usually come out of the nest by July-August. The nest watchers also came forward to volunteer during the non-breeding season to find and monitor hornbill roost sites.

Following this, we again met in December 2011 for a discussion about job responsibilities and related issues. They were to work in groups of two (with the experienced people helping the younger ones), and start searching for nests from January onwards.

Hornbills in the area start nesting from mid-March (female entry into nest cavity), however it is important to look for nests from January as pairs are seen flying around inspecting and clean-ing potential cavities and engagclean-ing in courtship behaviour.

In January 2012, a training session was orga-nized on how to look for nests and the data that the nest watchers need to record near the nest trees. From this year onwards, nest watchers will monitor the nests throughout the breeding season visiting each nest at least 1-2 times a week taking care not to disturb the birds, carefully record the

As a result of increased awareness among the local Nyishi community

and efforts to substitute real hornbill beaks with fiberglass beaks (an

initiative of the Wildlife Trust of India and the Arunachal Pradesh

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T H E H I N D U S U R V E Y O F T H E E N V I R O N M E N T 2 0 1 2 9 7 nest exit and entry dates and determine whether

nesting was successful. They have been provided with equipment and other essentials for their work.

In March the enthusiastic nest watchers had already located 26 potential nests of hornbills out-side in the Papum Reserve Forest and 17 of these sites are showing signs of activity with hornbills inspecting and cleaning the cavities. In some, the females have entered and have sealed the cavities. We have already faced some challenges and anticipate more along the way. But we find enough inspiration in our collective vision of abundant Bhelu trees, a thriving population of hornbills, busy males providing for their partners and the mothers in turn taking care of their chicks under the watchful eyes of Nyishi protectors. And

this novel relationship between the Nyishi and hornbills is supported through the generosity of a growing bunch of concerned citizens. With three sets of parents caring for them, Pakke's hornbills have a promising future.

The Rufous-necked hornbill is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN, and some higher elevation forests in Arunachal Pradesh are among the few places globally

to have relatively good populations. PHOTO: RAMKI SREENIVASAN/CONSERVATION INDIA

Aparajita Dattaand Amruta Raneare with Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore. Tana Tapiis DFO, Pakke Wildlife Division, Arunachal Pradesh.