3 min readNew DelhiNov 24, 2022 10:42 AM IST
First published on: Nov 23, 2022 at 11:34 PM IST
Indian wildlife biologist Dr Purnima Devi Barman was recently awarded with Champions of the Earth award in the Entrepreneurial vision category , UN’s highest environmental honour. She is the founder of the Hargila Army and senior project manager of the Avifauna Research and Conservation Division, Aaranyak.
The Champions of the Earth is an appreciation for innovative ways implemented by the awardees across the world to support nature’s extraordinary capacity for renewal.
Who is Purnima Devi Barman?
Barman is an Indian wildlife biologist working in Assam to protect storks. Her love for birds was born when was sent to live with her grandparents on the banks of the Brahmaputra River in Assam at the age of five. Barman’s grandmother, a farmer, started taking her to nearby paddy fields and wetlands to teach her about the birds there, which cultivated her passion.
After gaining a Master’s degree in Zoology, Barman started a PhD on the greater adjutant stork. She decided to delay her thesis after seeing that many of the birds in the region were nearing extinction and decided to focus on keeping the species alive.
She began campaigning to protect the stork in 2007, focusing on the villages in Assam’s Kamrup district, where the birds were most concentrated.
Why is Barman’s work important?
The greater adjutant stork is the second-rarest stork species in the world. Their population has dropped to 1,200 today, less than 1 per cent of what they numbered a century ago, due to the destruction of their natural habitat. The urbanisation of rural areas is speeding up and wetlands where the storks thrive have been drained, polluted and degraded, replaced by buildings, roads and mobile phone towers.
How is Barman saving the storks?
Barman had to change perceptions of the bird as a bad omen, bad luck or a disease carrier among people in Assam. She assembled a group of village women to help her and named the group as the ‘Hargila Army’ after the stork, known as ‘hargila‘ in Assamese (meaning ‘bone swallower’).
In 2017, Barman began building tall bamboo nesting platforms for the endangered birds to hatch their eggs and a couple of years later the first greater adjutant stork chicks were born.
The Hargila Army has helped communities plant 45,000 saplings near stork-nesting trees and wetland areas to support future stork populations and they are planning to plant 60,000 saplings next year. Hargila Army also works to reduce pollution in rivers by organising cleaning drives on the banks of rivers and in wetlands.
The number of nests in the villages of Dadara, Pachariya, and Singimari in Kamrup District have increased from 28 to more than 250 after Barman stared her conservation programme, making this the largest breeding colony of greater adjutant storks in the world.
How does the army uplift women?
Over 10,000 women make the Hargila Army today. Their primary tasks are to protect nesting sites, treat injured storks which have fallen from their nests and they also arrange “baby showers” to celebrate the arrival of newborn chicks.
Barman has helped the women become self-sufficient by weaving looms and yarn. They now create and sell textiles decorated with motifs of the ‘hargila’. This entrepreneurship is creating awareness about the birds and also making women financially independent.
Indian wildlife biologist Dr Purnima Devi Barman 
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