Monday 21 October 2019

Keti Bunder – A Wildlife Sanctuary at Thatha, Sindh

Keti Bunder is part of Indus Delta and situated at Thatha district, Sindh, Pakistan. The diversity of avian dominance and diversity of Keti Bunder; carried out at dawn and dusk in the winter season. Keti Bunder is situated at the mouth of the River Indus recognized as Ochito, which is entering through Hajamro creek consisting of an area of 9,130 hectares.
The mangrove forests are key forest and ecological features of this region. These mangroves covering an area of 2,631ha with the large size of 1996 ha. However, the medium size is about 3,588 ha with sparsely distributed. The remaining part consists of human settlements, Sand dunes, and water channels.
The area is consisting of a large number of channels on the western and the eastern sides. Whereas, on the other two sides are shallow and deep-water channels namely Hajamro Creek, Khobar Creek, Dabbo Creek, and Qalandri Creek.
Keti Bunder consists of 195 villages with the estimated population of the whole is about 27,405 and the number of households is more than 4,000. These towns are widely distributed in 35 acres area around the seawater. In a survey, around 49 winter season bird species belonging to 33 genera and 21 families were recorded. A total of 4280 birds were recorded dedicated survey effort from the Keti Bunder.
The most abundant species in this area are little egret, cattle egret, greater flamingo, greater egret, and common coot. The beautiful bird species number is decreasing with the passage of time due to anthropogenic impacts especially pollution impact.
The exponential growth of the population of humans has badly impacted the avian species in many ways such as; habitat loss, deforestation, invasive species, agriculture intensification, urbanization, industrialization, human-avian negative interactions, and climate change.
Almost, 90% of people are engaged with the fish industry. These fishermen are with different casts present in the area. The Syed and Memon communities are said to be well-reputed in terms of socioeconomic status, while the majority of them have a small business with agriculture land. The people are involved in fisheries in different ways as; fishermen, boat owners, boat captain, helpers in factories, transporters, merchant shops and drivers of fish carrier vehicles.
Keti Bunder is a Wildlife Sanctuary; for the conservation of water birds. The winter visitor and summer breeder’s birds are herons, egrets, waders, pelicans and raptors. Common terrestrial mammals are fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrrinus), Indian wild boar (Sus scrofa), Asiatic jackal (Canis aureus) and Indian porcupine (Manis crassicaudatus).
The most common reptiles are sea snakes, vipers, cobras and lizards. For the identification of avian species was a wildlife sanctuary, 2nd was Keti Bunder port and the remaining two were rural areas of the habitats. Each place visited for four months. Once in each month and twice a day at dawn and dusk.
Only one bird watcher moves from one place to another through ship or boat to measure bird diversity. The species of birds in the winter season from Head Qadirabad, Punjab. The freshwater areas of Pakistan have a high species number as compared to coastal areas of Pakistan. The freshwater landscapes have higher and unique nesting, roosting, feeding, shelter and breeding sites as compared with coastal areas.
However, the other reason is that industrial wastes, pesticides, household wastes are dumped in all rivers that polluted rivers water is entered in coastal water from all over the rivers of Pakistan. The anthropogenic impacts like deforestation, land degradation, agriculture use, shipping, high rate of fishing, urbanization, fertilizers and pesticide use, and ethno-avian use the main causes of species depletion.
The species number is getting low while the population of the bird is higher as compared with freshwater birds. The reason is that homogeneity in the landscape in the coastal area e.g. only mangrove plantation is present while freshwater landscapes have heterogeneity in landscapes, i.e., grasses, herbs, shrubs, and tree plantation.
It is concluded that bird species number is decreasing with the passage of time and noted that freshwater birds’ diversity is higher than coastal birds’ species. The reason is that pollution rat is increasing day by day in coastal areas of Pakistan. But it is also noted that less heterogeneity of landscape of the coastal area of Pakistan as compared with the freshwater landscape.

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Sunday 13 October 2019

The Dam Climbing Alpine Ibex (Capra ibex)


Alpine Ibex (Capra ibex) are big wild mountain goats that live among the peaks in the European Alps where predators cannot reach. They are a sexually dimorphic goat with larger curved horns and like to occupy the steep, rocky terrain above the tree line between 2000 to 3000 meters above sea level. It is extremely difficult to live there because there is no food upon the point.
These goats are very social as both males and females live separately most of the year and coming together just for the mating purpose. The breeding season begins in early December and lasts around six weeks. During this time, male Ibex herds break up into smaller groups that look for females.
When the spring and summer season comes, then plenty of grass available to them for feed. Like the snow falling starts, they are fattening up and build reserves to meet their requirements in winters. During the colder weather, the Alpine Ibex make their homes safely in the clouds. Many studies have shown the flexibility of their social systems related to environmental conditions.
The Capra ibex sibiricais related to predation, winter snowpack, forage availability, and human activities; in moose and white-tailed deer snowfall has an important influence on habitat selection. During the rut, ibexes used larch woods and rocky slopes, probably to minimize the risk of avalanches.
In the spring there was great variability in the use of the different habitats. The ibexes exploited all kinds of fresh vegetation to gratify their energetic requirements, and low altitude pastures were used only in this season. In summer, Ibexes stayed at a higher altitude, above the timberline and seemed to prefer Alpine meadows and stone ravines.
The Alpine Ibex lacks some essential minerals in their diet, like salt which aren’t available in the grass.  Like many herbivores, the Ibex must seek out natural salt licks. In the spring season, they meet their salt requirements but licking rock surfaces for leached salts. The concrete Dams fulfills the needs of salt and minerals to Alpine Ibex. These Dams release the calcium-aluminum mineral during the curing process. This process is also called ettringite almost 20% available in hardened concrete.
The Alpine Ibex are excellent climbers. They can easily climb any sheer vertical face of the dam’s wall. During the climbing process, they use small protruding boulders as a foothold to lick ettringite off the dam’s wall surface. These mountain goats scale such massive heights due to their soft, split hooves.
The Ibex can scale such great heights because of their soft, split hooves that can grip any surface like a pincer. The large grazing mountain goats’ ungulates habitat has been studied in reintroduced populations in the central and eastern European Alps.
The Italian Cingino Dam is a famous place where many Alpine Ibex’s gravity-defying stunts.  Moreover, such unusual behavior has also been observed at the Barbellino dam in Lombardy, and Lago della Rossa dam in Valli di Lanzo, Piemonte. The Alpine ibex approaches sexual maturity at around 18 months, but females do not reach their maximum body size for 5 to 6 years.
The Alpine ibex almost became extinct all over Europe at the beginning of the XIX century. However, they were surviving only in the area around the Mt Grivola within what these days are the Gran Paradiso National Park Italian Alps. The population was saved from extinction and recovered thanks to the setting up of the royal hunting reserve in 1856. Then later anomalous behavior compared with autochthonous ones.









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