Inside Tamil Nadu's Bid to Save the Glorious Hornbills of Western Ghats

Past initiatives have sparked dialogue on hornbill conservation, but they haven't been able to create a big impact.

Hornbills have long been hunted for their feathers, and for medicinal and aphrodisiac purposes. 

(Photo: Unsplashed/Altered by Aroop Mishra for The Quint)

Tamil Nadu has announced the establishment of a first-of-its-kind Centre for Excellence in the Western Ghats to conserve hornbills, magnificent yet vulnerable birds known for their fascinating nesting habits.

Western Ghats is home to four species of Hornbill: the Great Hornbill, the Malabar Grey Hornbill, the Malabar Pied Hornbill, and the Indian Grey Hornbill. The population of at least two of them are fast depleting due to habitat loss and degradation. 

The Malabar Grey Hornbill, endemic to the Western Ghats, has seen an especially concerning decrease.

The State of India’s Birds 2020 report indicates that the species has undergone a long-term decline of approximately 67 percent, with a recent annual reduction of 3.3 percent.

In January 2020, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reclassified this species from "Least Concern" to "Vulnerable".

Over the past two decades, Indian states have launched various initiatives to conserve hornbills. However, a Centre for Excellence could unify these efforts–spanning research, capacity building, public awareness, and policy–under a single umbrella.

Habitat Loss and Declining Populations of Hornbills

In the Papum Reserve Forest of Arunachal Pradesh, a critical habitat for species such as the Great, Wreathed, and Oriental Pied Hornbills, forest cover has shrunk significantly–from 38.55 sq km to 21.94 sq km–between 2011 and 2019.

In Northeast India, hornbills continue to be widely hunted. So much so that experts call these forests ‘silent forests’ with less wildlife presence.

Nagaland, which celebrates the hornbill festival every December, has a very small population of hornbills left in the wild. 

Hornbill hunting is also deeply intertwined with the cultural practices of various tribal communities. The Nyishi community of Arunachal Pradesh, for instance, has a strong cultural connection to hornbills.

“The beak/casque of the hornbill is considered a symbol of virility. Wearing the beak symbolises that the wearer had hunted the hornbill, representing bravery and valour. They have a bigger standing in society and are considered the most eligible bachelors. Using hornbill feathers in traditional customs is also observed here,” said Debobroto Sircar, Senior Manager, Wildlife Trust of India, an organisation that has worked on hornbill conservation for more than a decade. 

Wiping out the habitats of hornbills for monoculture plantations and development are other reasons contributing to their decline.

In the low-elevation Western Ghats region of Maharashtra, conversion of privately owned forests and repeated clear-felling of trees for fuelwood poses a significant challenge to hornbill persistence. Given that hornbills nest on trees that can be quite large and old, restoring their nesting habitats in the short-term is a major challenge

Rohit Naniwadekar of Nature Conservation Foundation.

As large-scale monoculture is replacing native forests, hornbills are losing their habitats.

“Hornbills have been reported to feed on fruits from close to 100 species of native plants in the Western Ghats. They play a critical role in dispersing their seeds and maintaining plant diversity. However, forest degradation and conversion to monoculture plantations drastically reduce the availability of these food plants for hornbills,”  Rohit said. 

It is also noteworthy that a long-term study in Tamil Nadu has documented population declines even within relatively secure habitats, raising significant concerns among hornbill biologists and conservationists.

Past Efforts and What Makes Tamil Nadu’s Initiative Unique

State governments and local communities in the past have adopted various initiatives for the conservation of hornbills. In an interesting three-way partnership between local communities, the Nature Conservation Foundation, and the Arunachal Pradesh Forest Department, locals help protect hornbills from hunting and the logging of nest trees.

In another initiative, the Wildlife Trust of India collaborated with the Arunachal Pradesh Forest Department and a local NGO, Arunachal Wildlife and Nature Foundation, to distribute artificial hornbill beaks made of fiberglass to the Nyishi community, replacing the use of real hornbill beaks in traditional headgear, a move that doesn’t diminish their cultural significance while protecting hornbills from hunting.

We distributed 5500 artificial gears to the community in ten years. These are better than the original ones which lose their sheen, colour and texture soon. We even trained the community on the ways to make them just like the real Hornbill beaks with the help of National Museum of Natural History and other fibre glass artisans.

Debobroto Sircar

In Kerala, where hornbills were extensively poached for their medicinal and aphrodisiac properties, local communities took the lead in their conservation.

“A proposed dam at Athirapally was identified as a threat because it would lead to the loss of crucial riverine forest habitat and nest trees. Plans for the dam were subsequently scrapped after sustained protests from local communities,” a report by Cornell Lab states.

Karnataka established a Hornbill Conservation Reserve in Dandeli to safeguard hornbill habitats. “The state also celebrates the annual hornbill festival, which focuses on protecting hornbills,” a forest department official from Karnataka said.

These initiatives from various pockets of the country have increased the dialogue on hornbill conservation but have not helped the cause at the macro level.

“While these are flagship projects, there is a need to look at Hornbill conservation from a multi-dimensional viewpoint and Tamil Nadu’s initiative is a step in the right direction," said Rohit.

He added, "A centre of excellence should focus on short-term projects such as systematically identifying important conservation areas for hornbills, nest protection in partnership with local communities and long-term ones such as ecological restoration and public engagement."

In an Instagram post, Additional Chief Secretary of the Environment, Forests, and Climate Change Department, Supriya Sahu, shared that the state government would protect nesting trees and recognise landowners as 'Hornbill Protectors.'

She added that the initiative would also include surveys and population estimation of hornbills, with a particular focus on the Malabar Pied Hornbill, a relatively understudied species in Tamil Nadu.

While other Indian states such as Maharashtra have been mulling over setting up a centre, Tamil Nadu pioneered it.

However, it is critical that other states, especially in north-east India and the Western Ghats region, follow suit and formulate similar plans for hornbill conservation in the long term.

(Laasya Shekhar is an independent journalist from Chennai with 10 years of experience in print and digital media, predominantly covering environmental, energy, and women's issues. This is an opinion piece. All views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)