Meet Purnima Devi Barman, the wildlife biologist, who received UN’s highest environmental honour

Indian wildlife biologist Purnima Devi Barman, who dedicated her life to the conservation of Greater Adjutant Storks – an endangered wetland bird– has become one of the honourees of this year’s United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) ‘Champions of the Earth’. The awards, which were announced on 22 November, are one of the highest environmental honours and Barman has been named the best under the ‘Entrepreneurial Vision’ category. This year alone, UNEP recorded around 2,200 nominations from across the world for the coveted award. Out of this overwhelming number of nominees, Barman was one of the five to make the big win.

Celebrating her victory, Purnima Devi told The Wire, “The entire team is extremely honoured to win the award.” The other winners include a non-profit group based in Lebanon called Arcenciel which works on waste management, Cécile Bibiane Ndjebet from Central Africa’s Cameroon who works to improve women’s rights in the region, Constantino Aucca Chutas from Peru who pioneered community reforestation model in the country and UK’s Partha Dasgupta who works on the economics of biodiversity. Who is Purnima Devi Barman? What does her work entail? We take a closer look. Who is Purnima Devi Barman? For a woman who has made a great name for herself as a wildlife conservationist, Barman’s childhood was not all happy and cheerful. The UNEP’s website mentions that as a five-year-old, she was sent to live with her grandmother in Assam on the banks of the Brahmaputra River. The little girl’s separation from her parents and siblings became so strong that she soon became inconsolable. Barman found comfort in birds when her grandmother, a farmer, took her to a paddy field to teach her about different birds in the region. She said, “I saw storks and many other species. She taught me bird songs. She asked me to sing for the egrets and the storks. I fell in love with the birds.”

Her love for birds – specifically storks– and wildlife alike was so strong that Barman decided to make a career out of it. She later pursued a Master’s degree in Zoology. Before she could start working on a PhD thesis on greater adjutant stork, also called ‘Hargila’ in Assam, she found out that the birds she grew up with were disappearing. Therefore, she put a pause on her thesis and focussed more on keeping the species alive. In 2007, she started a campaign to protect the stork in villages located in Assam’s Kamrup District where the population of storks was most concentrated. It is from here that her long and impactful journey as a wildlife and stork conservationist began. Her work Before she launched her campaign, Purnima Devi found that the extinction of storks was the result of the ‘unwelcoming’ nature of people in Assam. She says that in Assam, especially in the Kamrup district, the bird is criticised for being scavengers who feed on carcasses and bring back dead animals to their nestling trees, many of which grow in people’s gardens. To tackle the nuisance created by storks, which are about 5 feet tall, villagers used to cut down tall trees in their backyards to devoid them of a place to live, ultimately resulting in their extinction. Barman, who herself has been mocked for saving the birds, said, “The bird was totally misunderstood. They were treated as a bad omen, bad luck or a disease carrier.” She knew that to address this issue, she had to alter the perception of people in the village. And since the bird needed to be protected as they play a vital role in a wetland ecosystem, she mobilised women in the region and built an army called the ‘Hargila Army’.

The conservation efforts included building tall bamboo nesting platforms to provide the endangered birds a platform to hatch their eggs and to give them a space to habitat. Purnima Devi is also the senior project manager of an NGO called ‘Avifauna Research and Conservation Division’. The Hargila Army Purnima Devi’s brainchild, the Hargila Army has been a success ever since it was launched. Today, the group consists of over 10,000 women from all of Assam who put together their effort in order to protect nesting sites and rehabilitate injured storks which fall from their nests. To encourage a growing population of storks, the group also celebrates the arrival of newborn chicks by arranging baby showers for them. Apart from this, in a bid to spread awareness about Hargil, Purnima Devi thought it would be a good idea to open a branch of entrepreneurship as a part of the army where women weave looms and yarn to create textiles decorated with motifs of the bird. Along with creating awareness, the business also made women financially independent and boosted their livelihoods. The army, ever since its operation, has built around 250 nestling homes across the villages of Dadara, Pachariya and Singimari from a mere 28 nests. Now, Kamrup District has become the largest breeding colony for greater adjutant storks in the world. Why is stork conservation so important? Once the most abundant stork in the world, greater adjutant storks are now only found in parts of Cambodia and India. Their apparent extinction is a threat to the wetland ecosystem of their quality of being scavengers whose diet includes fish, rodents and snakes. Their large size enables them to swallow big bones. For this very reason, they have also earned the status of “cleaners” of their ecosystem who also perform as predators of the wetlands. With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.