Conservationist Rallies Together 10,000 Women To Help Save India’s Rarest Stork

India’s rarest stork is making a comeback thanks to the unique conservation efforts of Dr. Purnima Devi Barman.

That stork, the Greater Adjutant Stork (Leptoptilos dubius), is locally known as Hargila (the bone swallower) and is typically viewed as a nuisance – but that’s changing.

According to the non-profit Mongabay, the species was once found throughout India and Southeast Asia in abundance, but locals despised them and treated them as pests. Sadly, local attitudes toward the bird paired with severe habitat loss threatened the species and pushed them toward the brink of extinction.

By the 1990s, just 1,000 birds remained and their numbers only continued to drop.

Thankfully, that all changed when Dr. Barman began the pursuit of a Ph.D. in stork biology. According to The Guardian, she had her eyes set on the endangered stork species when word spread that residents of a village had cut down a nest tree, which resulted in several injured and dead chicks.

Dr. Barman quickly rushed to the scene and realized she needed to change the opinions of locals if conservationists had a chance at keeping the Greater Adjutant Stork alive.

In a revolutionary conservation move, Dr. Barman began to host festivals in celebration of people along India’s Brahmaputra River who had burflower trees, or kadam, in their yards. The festivals celebrated those people and honored them as protectors and guardians of a rare bird – the Greater Adjutant Stork.

The tactic was well-received and it helped ensure the stork species had safe places to nest since locals weren’t keen on cutting down the trees that would bring them honor and celebration at the festivals.

In the end, Dr. Barman rallied a group of some 10,000 women who named themselves The Hargila Army. Those women came together to protect the rare stork species and bring it back from the brink of extinction.

In an interview with The Guardian, Dr. Barman explained: “Conservation is all about uniting people and building ownership. I’ve always believed that, if given a chance, women can make a big difference in conservation.”

According to research on the stork published in Ethnobiology Letters, the work of Dr. Barman helped increase the number of Greater Adjutant Storks from just to 200 in 2018 to 1,000 today.

Check out the video below to learn more: