NAGAON: A capacity building training on Bengal Florican Monitoring and Conservation for frontline forest staff of Laokhowa & Burhachapori Wildlife sanctuaries was organized on Friday at Dhania Range Office. The training was organised by Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) in collaboration with Nagaon Wildlife Division, Assam and support from ZSL EDGE and Fondation Segre. Biswajit Chakdar, Scientist from BNHS and a Segre-EDGE Fellow was the resource person for the training programme.
More than 20 frontline forest staff from Dhania Range, Burhachapori WLS and Gorajan Range, Laokhowa WLS participated in the training. ArunVignesh, DFO, Nagaon Wildlife Division, and Dr.Bibhuti Ranjan Gogoi, RFO, Burhachapori WLS and A. K. Deka, RFO, Laokhowa WLS, BNHS Field staff VinodTiwari and AkashRajuwar were also present.
Bengal Florican, commonly known as Ulomoraor Ulumoirain Assamese, is a critically endangered bustard species distributed in India, Nepal and Cambodia. The Bengal Florican represents a unique and irreplaceable part of world's biodiversity and therefore it is ranked 7th in Evolutionarily Distinct & Globally Endangered (EDGE) list of birds. In India, present distribution of this grassland specialist bird is in floodplain grasslands of Uttar Pradesh, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. The bird is now only found in few protected areas and some non-protected chapories (river islands) of the Brahmaputra River and its tributaries. The population of this globally threatened bird is declining mostly due to habitat loss and degradation, hunting, cattle overgrazing in grasslands, stated a press release.