DelhiBird started as a bird watching club in the early 2000. It gradually evolved into an organization doing a wide range of activities.
Advocacy for Nature’s rights: Rights of Nature is the recognition and honoring that natural ecosystems including trees, oceans, animals, mountains have rights just as human beings have rights.
Rather than treating nature as property under the law, the time has come to recognize that nature and all our natural organisms/ species, communities and eco-systems have the right to exist, maintain and regenerate their vital cycles.
And we – the people – have the responsibility to enforce these rights on behalf of ecosystems. There is an urgent need to recognise and include the nature’s rights in the constitution and lawbooks of most nations. It is for the ultimate good of mankind that we fight for the nature’s rights today and with utmost urgency.
We have a panel of experts working on the advocacy projects.
One of the recent examples of our success in our advacacy effort is the Basai wetland case. We had filed a case with NGT to stop the construction activity around Basai wetland in Haryana. The court has issued an injuction order to halt all construction activity on the site.
Conservation & Sustainability: India is naturally endowed with a lot of bio-diversity and quite a lot of it has survived the industrial revolution and the invention of guns and motorized wheels. But now it seems like a crunch time. The rapidly growing population and the ambitious economic development plans are certainly not great news for “conservation & sustainability”. We need to devise newer and greener ways to reach trade-offs. We have many ideas and we are looking for more and better ideas.
Education & Information dissemination:
- School Outreach Programs
- Delhibirdpix for sharing pictures, data, bird sighting reports and other relevant information [ in operation since 2001]
- Facebook page Delhibird, The Indian bird Network [ More than 12,500 members]
- Bird Talk Series at WWF
- Cuckoo About Nature Club for school going children
- Annual participation in Delhi Walk Festival to conduct Bird & nature walks to introduce Delhi citizens to birds and nature
Building community: DBF has been engaged in building a large community since its early years. Today the community is more than 50,000 strong and includes birders, ornithologists, wildlife biologists, nature photographers, conservationists, authors, earth scientists, citizen scientists and sensitive citizens.
We engage with this community on various platforms such as weekend bird and nature walks, bird counts, annual bird census and big bird day census report, quiz & dinner, bird talk series, 3 day bird fests etc.
Habitat Monitoring: We have been informally keeping tabs on the health of habitats across the length and the breadth of the country through reports of our member sharing data on bird sightings. We are planning to add some analytical algorithms to our legacy and future data for better monitoring.
New Projects: Hide Installation at frequented birding spots: We have identified this as a key focus area for us. This would promote not only better habitat protection but would also instill birding ethics and etiquettes in growing tribe of birders and wildlife photographers.
Target: 30 sites before Dec 2018
Funds Needed: Rs. 10 Lac per site for hide and protected walkway + Rs. 2 lacs p.a. for upkeep
Expected Outcome: Better and healthier habitats, Better Birding etiquettes
New Project: Black necked Cranes nest protection & Changpas enrolment
Main site: Tsokar, Ladakh
Funds Needed: 20 Lacs p.a.
Expected Outcome: Species recovery
Click here for a detailed report
New Project: Sarus cranes at Dhanauri wetland
Main Site: Dhanauri village pond/ wetland in western UP
Funds Needed: Rs. 20 Lacs p.a.
Expected Outcome: Better vigilance and protection of sarus nesting sites, enrolling the villages to prevent any conflicts
Upcoming Event: 9th Asian Bird fair 2018
Site: Yet to be finalized
Dates: Yet to be finalized
