Environmental Activism by Young People - like Save Aravalli Trust

We were invited to participate with this :

25 of us cleaned a portion of sec 7 housing board colony park one morning 7.30-9 am. It was good fun. People from seven different residential areas participated in cleaning the park.

Two bags of plastics, rubber were taken out including many gutka packets. we bought the bags back to be put into garbage clearance.

Vineet of Save Aravalli Trust had organized this gathering. He is the one in a red T-shirt talking to people at the end of the clean up.

Save Aravalli Trust was started in Faridabad by the children of villagers who had monopolized rock mining for decades there. A portion of the Aravallis were thus destroyed and only after severe supreme court injunctions was the mining stopped. These educated young men want to give back to society what their parents took from it.

A chapter of the Save Aravalli Trust has been started in Bhiwadi and Vineet leads it. They all contribute their own time, money and hard work to environmental work, besides holding down full time jobs.

Sanjayji of Sec 7 Housing Colony cleaned up a large portion of the park by himself..

Mothers came with children to clean up..

Elders helped too.

As some housing board colony residents came to watch, we told them their trash, tipped over the wall into the park was likely a breeding ground for mosquitoes causing chikangunia, dengue and malaria..

The whole family, planting a bougainvillea cutting. There is a good boundary wall, but no vines covering it.

People keep jumping over the wall then, destroying it in the process. Vines play a big role in preventing such jumping over boundaries. They keep the environment cool, their woody parts store carbon di oxide, and best of all - birds find homes in them and you can enjoy bird sound.

We also planted some 20 four feet high trees and some 20 cuttings of pink bougainvillea dipped in rooting hormone.

Our childhood friend, the sparrow is in sharp decline - what can you do ?

Urban sparrow populations have been in decline since automobiles began replacing horse-and-buggies (tangas) as the transportation of choice and thus deprived sparrows of the chance to dip into horses' feed.

Later, rural populations of sparrows began to drop as well; pesticides and changing land use patterns were all thought to be part of that story.

However, neither of these compared to the precipitous decline that began in urban areas in the early 1990s. The decline this time around has been upto 70 % of sparrow populations in many parts of the world including India, and is linked to exhaust fumes from vehicles, declining nutritious food and lack of suitable nesting sites.

Insects and worms that are a critical part of the sparrow chick diet have been vanishing because of cemented areas and pesticide use.

Vines and hedges are an important nesting resource for sparrows and these have declined in numbers as have thick trees away from lights, noise and pollution.

Many studies were consulted for the above information : here, here, here, here, here and here.

What are sparrows like ?

Sparrows roost communally. Their nests are usually grouped together in clumps.

They engage in social activities such as dust or water bathing and "social singing", in which birds call together in bushes. Much communal chirping occurs before and after the birds settle in the roost in the evening, as well as before the birds leave the roost in the morning.

House sparrows consume grains in fields and in storage. They do not move great distances into grain fields, preferring to stay close to the shelter of hedgerows.

Sparrows can perform complex tasks to obtain food, such as opening automatic doors to enter supermarkets.

The house sparrow is monogamous, and typically mates for life.

Young house sparrows remain in the nest for a fortnight and are fed mostly on insects and worms during this period.

If both parents happen to perish, the ensuing intensive begging sounds of the young often attract replacement parents which feed them until they can sustain themselves.

Mortality is highest during the first year of life. Few sparrows survive in the wild past their fifth season.

What can you Do ?

From 5 sparrows visiting / living near our house in 2011, we now have about 40 who live in our garden most of the year. The steps we took around our house and garden were : 

# Bajra feeding stations - as many as we had space for in different parts of the house.

# Deep water bowls filled with water to the brim so they can easily drink and also bathe in the water.

# Leftover food is collected in kitchen by scraping clear plates and karahis and given to birds in separate dishes. 

# All utensils are washed atleast once in 2-3 days but washed away from the kitchen.

# Nest boxes are put up and cleaned once a year too. 

# No pesticides are used in our garden so worms / insects possibly abound. 

# We dont disturb the birds by sharp sounds.

# We try to keep cats away though are not always successful. Cats eat 1-2 birds for hunger but kill many more for play. Other predators such as owls or shikras kill only for hunger so are fine.