ela foundation

An owl festival to spread awareness on the role of the birds in agriculture, as well as the superstitions related to it, will be held at Ela Habitat in Pingori on December 1 and December 2 from 9am to 5pm.

The international raptor conference, aimed at conservation of birds of prey, will be held for the first time in India in the city between February 6 and 9.

Sounds that birds, amphibians, mammals and insects make will be studied in a laboratory to be set up in the city by non-governmental organisation ela foundation and the Maharashtra Education Society (MES).

Satish Pande, ornithologist and founder-director of NGO Ela Habitat said effective conservation was not enough and it is more important to save habitats for biodiversity to thrive.

The Ela Transit Treatment Centre (ETTC) of the city-based ela foundation and Maharashtra forest department examined, treated and successfully re-wilded three ‘rescued’ Chinkara fawns in April, July and August, during foaling season.

ela foundation, state forest department and Seescap organisation, wing tagged and released four white-rumped vultures (Gyps bengalensis) in Shrivardhan and Mhasala in Raigad district recently, a first such initiative in the country.

City-based Ela Habitat recently recorded the first instance of winter migratory Blue Rock Thrush returning to the same wintering ground, confirming their site fidelity.

City-based NGO Ela Habitat, which works towards conservation and protection of birds, will organise the 6th World Owl Conference 2019 at the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) from November 29.

The state forest department and Pune-based ela foundation have hatched four eggs of a peahen in an incubator after they were abandoned when they were exposed from the concealed nest in Pingori village in Saswad, some 66km from Pune.

The unusual quiet in the wake of the lockdown has brought back many winged creatures to the rural parts of Pune, a joint study by state forest department and Pune-based ela foundation said.

A recent study by city-based ela foundation and MES Abasaheb Garware College, to assess the impact of wind farms on birds at the Bhambarwadi Plateau in the northern Western Ghats, found 27 bird species out of 89 at the risk of collision with the rotor blades of the wind turbines.

City-based NGO ela foundation and the National Institute of Virology (NIV) have said in a recently-published research paper that electrocution may also be an explanation for the decreasing numbers of vultures in India, apart from other factors like shortage of food and Diclofenac poisoning, which occurs after vultures scavenge carcasses of livestock treated with a drug called diclofenac.

An interactive certificate course in basic ornithology would commence in the city from December 30.