Manipur: How these villagers are trying to save amur falcons

Tamenglong, Manipur: In order to conserve and protect the amur falcon from extinction, officials from the Tamenglong forest department along with Rainforest Club, Tamenglong organised a mass awareness programme at Kebuching in Tamenglong district on Thursday.

The programme was also attended by residents from the neighbouring villages of Puching, Gwangram, Punglam and Diuluan, Wairangba.

A mobile awareness campaign unit was also launched during the function. The unit will visit all the villages with public address system to spread awareness messages for the protection and conservation of amur falcon.

During the function, a mass poster campaign was also launched to cover most of the villages of Tamenglong and Noney areas.

Earlier, issuing strict warning to those who are involved in the killing of the migratory bird, the authorities concerned at the Tamenglong and Noney districts of Manipur had recently imposed a ban on the use of air guns.

Last week, an amur falcon, which was recently satellite-tagged and named ‘Manipur’ as part of the Amur Falcon Dance Festival 2018, was found killed by unknown miscreants at Kebuching bordering the Tamenglong and Noney districts of the state.

Weighing 160 grams on an average, amur falcons are long-distance migratory birds and arrive in the Northeast, mainly in Manipur and Nagaland, on their south-bound migration during October from their breeding grounds in northern China, eastern Mongolia and far-east Russia en-route to their wintering grounds in South Africa. The one-way journey from their breeding to wintering grounds via India is about 20,000 km and they do this twice a year.