After 25 years of anonymity, the only sanctuary for avian species in State Udhwa sanctuary is expected to get a new lease of life soon. local State authorities have expressed their willingness to bring this sanctuary in Sahibganj on the global tourist map with number of renovation, rejuvenation and development related works around.
“The idea is not at all new. We don’t want to leave the only avian bird sanctuary in the State unnoticed for good and see it dying day by day. We will have to develop it and make its presence felt across the globe,” said Udhwa BDO Prabhash Dutta.
Spread across an area of 5.65 Kilometers and famous on papers for being home of hundreds of species of migratory birds, the Udhwa Bird Sanctuary was developed in 1991 when it was a part of Bihar. last year also, a blue-print for the development of the park was drawn by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and state forest department jointly.
The visit had resulted in a team of wildlife experts and forest experts from Union government visiting at the site and observing ecological conditions. However, team’s report submitted to State government couldn’t bear much fruit for the sanctuary, reason well known to them only.
“Now that tourism across the world has proved to be huge source of employment and revenue generation and State government is planning to develop each and every possible tourist spot into a favourite tourism destination, we have also suggested a number of steps to be taken for the sanctuary in months to come,” said Dutta.
He added that the sanctuary needed to have lot many things to be done. “There is only one guest house around and we need to develop more lodging facilities. Tourism infrastructure is badly missing. We have not been able to develop site seeing programme and necessary facilities required for this. Then, a well-developed park could attract more and more tourists,” added Dutta.
Udhwa sanctuary hosts the biggest entourage of migratory birds each winter. Birds like large whistling duck, gadwall, Eurasian wigeon, cotton teal, mallard, comb duck and many more, mostly endangered species of birds use to flying in from Mongolia and Central Asia every year.
According to the first water bird census conducted by state forest department last year, the Udhwa hosted more than 20,000 of the 37,000 odd migratory birds that arrived in Jharkhand during winters of 2014-15. “However, local encroachment is a big issue here. We need to address it also,” said Dutta.
