Telangana forest department steps up efforts to curb Palapitta poaching ahead of Dasara

With Dasara approaching, Telangana’s forest department and wildlife conservation groups are stepping up efforts to curb poaching of the Indian Roller, or Palapitta. Officials plan meetings with departments and stakeholders, while rescued birds will be released into the wild.

Hyderabad: As the Dasara festival approaches, the forest department and NGOs associated with wildlife conservation in Telangana have decided to focus on curbing the poaching of the Indian Roller (Palapitta), the State bird of Telangana.

Since people believe that sighting Indian Rollers on the day of Dasara would bring them good luck, poachers would capture and display the birds in temples and pandals of goddess Kanakadruga during the Navratri festivities. Of late, even gated communities have started displaying the bird at the pandals, even though most of the residents were highly educated.

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To curb such practices, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) Vinay Kumar held a meeting with various stakeholders at Aranya Bhavan on Monday. While seeking suggestions from representatives of NGOs, Vinay Kumar said that they would shortly hold another meeting with 20 different departments to strictly stop the practice. He further said that they would also engage the endowments department, residential welfare societies and other concerned stakeholders to stop poaching the Indian Roller.

During the last Dasara, he said that they could rescue some 28 Indian Rollers, which were later released into the wild. However, he worried that the caging of the bird may prove fatal for it since the bird would not feed properly due to stress. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) listed the bird under the ‘Near Threatened’ category, moving out of the least concern category a year ago.

Following this, Rajya Sabha member Dr K Lakshman also wrote a letter to the State government, seeking concrete measures for conservation of the State bird. Since then, the State forest department, in collaboration with WildLife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, has been working on the conservation of Indian Roller. During the meeting, the officials also unveiled a poster on the conservation of the bird, which would be displayed across the State.