New Delhi: The red-naped ibis, whose loud calls from atop a cellphone tower early in the morning often wakes you up, is visible across India’s farmlands and cities but invisible in scientific literature!
How? This is a fact that came to light in a multi-year monitoring programme from 2014 and 2022 by involving trained farmers and other local residents in districts across Nepal and northern India, traversing over 340,000 km.
The programme was designed by Gopi Sundar, the Co-chair of the IUCN Stork, Ibis and Spoonbill Specialist Group.
This species, resident in South Asia, is found nowhere else in the world. That there are so many of these stunning birds is good news at a time when many other species are being found to have declined to small numbers.
Gopi Sundar explained to IANS that this is the same bird passengers would see sitting on the electricity poles as you enter the Delhi airport area. And farmers know this bird as the one that is unafraid to pick up grubs from near their feet.
Until recently, the red-naped ibis was known to be one of the least studied waterbirds in the world.
A new study published in SIS Conservation, the official publication of the IUCN Stork, Ibis and Spoonbill Specialist Group, has added important new information on the species’ habits.
During the bird surveys, nearly 10,000 observations were obtained of over 54,000 red-naped ibis. The analysis of this humongous data set is yielding among the first ecological understanding of this species.
The first significant finding was that there were at least hundreds, though usually thousands of red-naped ibis in each location. Put together, the researchers provide the first population estimate for the species at between 1,700,000 and 2,540,000 red-naped ibis.
This first estimate is markedly different from the population mentioned in the BirdLife International’s Red List status. They list the global population of the species as less than 10,000 and declining.
The red-naped ibis joins a long list of species that have had no serious ecological work focused on them until now but have had a definitive Red List status and a confident population estimate accorded to them.
Many of these statuses are accompanied by population estimates derived from volunteer-based winter waterfowl counts at wetlands. However, several species of waterbirds across Africa and Asia also use habitats such as agricultural areas.
The red-naped ibis also uses cities suggesting that counts at wetlands would be gross underestimates — which the new study provides proof of.
Gopi Sundar told IANS that a lot of the bird species that are found in India may need to be accorded “Data Deficient” status to accurately reflect what is known of their habits. Doing so would allow researchers and conservationists to identify species that require research attention.
He says it would also make the Red List — a globally important metric for tracking conservation — a reliable source of information. As the Co-chair now, he’s working with a global group of people interested in the 60 plus species of storks, ibises and spoonbills and trying to identify which species have accurate Red List assessments, and which ones have a Red List status that is made up with unreliable or incorrect information.
“There are, unfortunately, quite a lot of species of storks and ibises that seem to have incorrect and unreliable statuses. This situation of unnecessarily providing Red List status for all birds needs to be changed so that governments, academics, and conservation organizations can take the Red List seriously,” he believes.
The new study also found that the density of the red-naped ibis in each location reduced during the winter. It is not entirely clear why these ibises are seen less during the winter, but Gopi Sundar suggests that this is an interesting aspect for future studies.
Since the red-naped ibis is resident, it can potentially be a great species to expend long-term resources on, especially since it commonly uses human modified areas such as farmlands and cities. Around the world, both cities and farmlands are being seen to lead to declines of bird species.
South Asia, it appears, has conditions that enable species like red-naped ibises to proliferate alongside human habitations. Trying to understand what allows for this situation is important and can be useful to make the situation better in countries where farmlands and urban birds are declining.
The new study also found that the red-naped ibis numbers declined in areas and in seasons when rainfall was high. These seasonal variations were far from trivial, with maximum densities being as high as three times the lowest density in the same location.
Gopi Sundar suggests that tracking the population of such a species will be very challenging given the observed fluctuations in numbers. The good news was that there are many locations across India where there are thousands of these ibises.
He told IANS the new study provides a new nuanced understanding of the habits of a resident waterbird species of India for the first time. “It is not every day that you get to be part of writing species accounts from scratch by providing among the first ecological information on the species,” he said.
This work adds to ongoing scientific explorations across South Asian farmlands and cities that are showing these areas to be excellent habitats for a number of large waterbird species such as the Sarus crane and the woolly-necked stork.
Gopi Sundar concluded by saying, “We are pleased to add the red-naped ibis to the list of species benefiting from the South Asian countryside. There are likely to be many more and we hope much more work is done outside the protected areas network of the country.”
_IANS