Bird Clubs of J&K: From an online community to creating jobs

While the world was forced into a lockdown last year, a group on Facebook encouraged people in Kashmir to observe the world from their windows and share with others. This is how Irfan Jeelani and a few others started the group Birds of Kashmir, which a year later has more than 5,000 members online, Mint reported.

Birdwatching is not a new concept in J&K. However, it is becoming a new niche in the tourism industry of the UT. Flocks of groups have come from various cities such as Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai to Kashmir. They were hosted by Kashmir's oldest birding club, Kashmir Birdwatch.

Hosting such groups has also provided employment opportunities to locals who are being trained in bird-spotting. These locals can earn anywhere between Rs 1,500 - 3,000 for a day's work. “We are training local educated and unemployed youth so that they can earn a living as tour guides for birder groups visiting J&K,” Jeelani told the publication.

Kashmir is home to a wide variety of species of birds such as the Orange Bullfinch, Kashmir Nuthatch and Kashmir Nutcracker and has also seen sightings of rare species such as the Tundra Swan, Pallas’ Rosefinch, Yellow-hammer and Reed Bunting have been sighted in the last couple of years.

Birding group Birds of Kashmir are also trying to establish a bird rescue centre. Across all social media platforms the group urges members to share any incidents of poaching that the witness or come across. Last year the members made their first bird calendar and gave away 500 free copies.

What started as an online community during the pandemic, now also meets regularly offline now that the pandemic restrictions have been lifted.

Kashmir Birdwatch was set up in 2009, and later in 2011, got a Facebook group, which now has a presence of 9,000 people. It was set up by horticulturist Tassaduq Moeen and the group has trained 15 bird guides who in turn have been training others.

Intesar Suhail, a wildlife warden in J&K’s wildlife protection department and a founding member of Kashmir Birdwatch says birdwatching was practically non-existent in Kashmir till their group of young wildlife graduates arrived on the scene in the mid-1990s. Now their group has members from various fields—agriculture, engineering, information technology and bureaucracy.

Over the last five years, Kashmir Birdwatch has been a key contributor to the Citizen Science Initiative which has a portal where people an upload data from their birding trips adding to their vast dataset. “We have so far contributed more than 250 bird checklists, which cover around 300 bird species, on the eBird portal,” Suhail told Mint.

Kashmir Birdwatch has also contributed by providing a checklist of birds in J&K "which was subsequently published in the reputed research publication Springer in 2020,” says Suhail.