Agartala: The Forest department of Tripura on Friday sent a team of wildlife experts in the western villages of Udaipur in Gomati district following a report of the sudden death of over a hundred of purple moorhen (western migratory birds), officials informed on Friday.
Principal Chief Conservator of Forest D K Sharma said, “Wildlife officials headed by District forest officer (Gomati) were sent to the localities and raised an alarm among the villagers not to consume any dead bird and help the department to collect the carcass for investigation.”
The samples of dead birds would be sent to Animal Resource Development Department’s laboratory for an autopsy of and carry out the investigation to ascertain the reason for their large-scale death, he said adding, “Apparently, it seems consumption of some insecticides used in the nearby agricultural field, which might be rolled down and dissolved in the marshy land due to rain was the reason of the death of birds. However, this is still inconclusive.”
According to a report, the villagers of Khilpara of Udaipur on Thursday noticed a few migratory birds dead in a big water body. Their number had increased manifolds by the evening.
Some of the dead birds were reportedly taken away by a few villagers for consumption that prompted the forest officials to raise the alarm in the villages against the intake of the dead birds’ meat. Tripura is a comfortable destination for migratory birds from the African region during the pre-moon days.
The purple moorhen bird is one of the rare birds that travel a thousand kilometers from Siberia to Northeast India, especially in Tripura via China.
