The man who saved the Garuda

As A teenager 53 yearold Arvind Mishra liked to think of himself as the chaser of the Big Cat While his classmates played cricket Mishra read Jim Corbett and Kenneth Anderson and loved to conjure wild adventures in his daydreams The ldquotrivialrdquo creatures of the forests mdash the birds and butterflies mdash irritated Mishra who is a pharmacist by profession Had someone told the Bhagalpur resident then that he would grow up to be the saviour of the Greater Adjutant species in Bihar as coordinator in Bihar and Jharkhand for the Indian Birds Conservation Network he says he would have smirked Before Arvind Mishra top left began his conservation efforts among the Gulgulava community in Bhagalpur district in Bihar locals thought nothing of illtreating injured Greater Adjutants above Pics CourtesyArvind Mishra The Greater Adjutant enjoys a respectable place in Indian mythology but not in its own habitats The bird also called the Garuda is revered as the carrier of Lord Vishnu in Indian mythology However until 2005 the bird itself was a myth in the areas around Bhagalpur because no one knew about its existence Today thanks to Mishrarsquos efforts with Biharrsquos locals the Greater Adjutant population in Bhagalpur has quadrupled mdash from 78 to over 300 Arvind Mishra Mishrarsquos annoyance toward birding changed in 1989 when he was 29 years old at an outing organised by the World Wildlife Fund WWF in Tamil Nadu He was actively involved with the bodyrsquos activities ldquoI was the only person from Bihar and realised that there was no documentation on the birds in the staterdquo Mishra took it quite personally In 1991 he started the Mandar Nature Club to introduce children and adults in Bihar to the fecund biodiversity of the state Around the same time he began touring wetlands in Bihar and realised no one had addressed their threats Mishra started his first avian project at Udhuwa Lake in Sahebgunj in Bihar and turned it to a mass movement with the help of locals Thanks to his efforts Udhuwa Lake was notified as a bird sanctuary in 1992 after he released a status report on the lake ldquoIt was my first experience with conservationrdquo he saysu00a0In 2004 by sheer accident Mishra came across the first batch of Greater Adjutants ever spotted in Bihar in Purnea district ldquoOut of nowhere I saw colonies of Greater Adjutants near the Ganga mdash 42 of them We went deeper into the area and saw two more nests where the birds were incubating their youngrdquo he recalls A member of the local Gulgulava community treats an injured Greater Adjutant Until then only two sites in the world were known to be home to about 650800 Greater Adjutants in the world mdash Assam and Cambodia Assam had a mere 20 per cent of Garudas in the world ldquoWe had discovered the worldrsquos third Greater Adjutant breeding site mdash nothing prepares you for that sort of thingrdquo says Mishra Mishra approached the Wildlife Trust of India and got the requisite funds But saving the Garuda was more than about saving nests Soon Mishra approached the Gulgulava community in the interiors of Bhagalpur ldquoThe villages donrsquot have electricity and telephones even today There are no roads and the crime rate is so terrifying that even cops donrsquot enter the place Every maize field there hides arms Would they care about conserving a birdrdquo wondered Mishra Mishra was right mdash the community mistook him and his assistants for government officials even spies and often chased them away But they realised that he wasnrsquot the sort to give up He began by showing them pictures of the Greater Adjutant in international books and telling them that right outside their homes was a rare valuable gift under threat Mishra appealed to their religious side and told them how the bird is Lord Vishnursquos carrier ldquoIt softened them a bitrdquo he says He also told the community that their farms could be free from rodents because Garudas feed on rats and that their children would be safer around the bird because they fed on snakes too ldquoGradually pictures of the communityrsquos children tending to the birds and began to appear on local news channelsrdquo says Mishra It worked ldquoThe locals began trusting us and conserving the Garuda in any way they could As they originally believed we were smugglers too among other things we stopped taking injured Garudas to our rescue centres We began treating them right in front of the localsrsquo eyes It meant losing a few Garudas but it was important for the community to trust usrdquo says Mishra A local after watching Mishra on TV told him that he believed him because smugglers donrsquot make it on TV ldquoWell thatrsquos not strictly true but I can understand what he meantrdquo smiles Mishra So is Mishrarsquos dream of being the next Jim Corbett close to fruition ldquoCorbett was a coward He once fainted at the mere sight of a bear I have a lot more to do before I can afford to do thatrdquo he laughsu00a0