Asian Open Bill.

Migration remains one of the most essential activities of the avian world. Twice a year, billions of birds migrate vast distance across the globe. The Central Asian flyway, the shortest flyways in the world connects the Palaearctic region with the Indian Subcontinent. Many threatened birds including wetland birds such as Baer's Pochard , Falcated Duck, breed in the Palaearctic Region and fly south towards Indian subcontinent to avoid harsh winter and vice versa. During this migration, they use various areas as stopover habitats and most of them are not protected. The route through the Kaligandaki valley, Pokhara valley and Chitwan is one of the major migratory route in Nepal which is located within Chitwan-Annapurna Landscape. These habitats are becoming degraded for various reasons, including urbanization, hunting, poisoning. Most of the local people may not know the significance of wetlands and the presence of migratory birds nearby. Previous Rufford Grant-supported projects were site specific and limited to conserve wetland birds as they excluded stopover habitats and some major breeding and non-breeding habitats along the migratory route. Therefore, this project has been designed to involve local people on bird and their habitat conservation along this landscape, an important migratory route.

This project will support the conservation of wetland birds and their various habitats in the Chitwan-Annapuran Landscape from high (4000m) to low (300m) altitudes. First, the awareness of local residents will be raised on ecology and conservation of migratory wetland birds around wetland habitats at different altitudes. During this activities, short courses of awareness will be designed for students and community. The courses will be delivered using various audiovisual methods. Additionally, short messages on wetland bird conservation will broadcasted and displayed in project areas respectively through local FM radio and hoarding board display. Moreover, local course will be designed and piloted to extent the important of local natural and cultural resources to local students. On the other hand, workshop will be organized among local political leaders, tourism entrepreneurs, city planning officers, forest development planners, and environment officers. Participants will be sensitized for eco-friendly urbanization, habitat conservation, impacts of current urbanization on biodiversity and habitat conservation. Last but not the least, tourism flagship species of birds in project areas (Pokhara and Chitwan) will be indentified and bird watching guide training will be conducted among youths of the project targeted areas.