Environmental Information System (ENVIS), Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Government of India (GoI) has launched an initiative of Green Skill Development Programme (GSDP). ENVIS has a network of 31 States/UT hubs & 35 RPs with specific themes. All 66 ENVIS hubs/RPs have started around 32 certificate courses under GSDP, which will give green skills to support conservation and livelihood for needy people.
Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) is a host for ENVIS Resource Partner for Avian Ecology and has inaugurated a Certificate Course on "Bird Identification and Basic Ornithology” under Green Skill Development Programme (GSDP) on August 06, 2018. This Certificate Course spans about a month’s time-period where the candidates have been selected from different states of India such as Gujarat, Rajasthan, etc. Candidates from tribal areas have been preferred for this course.
Dr. Anandi Subramanian, Senior Economic Advisor & Mr. Kumar Rajnish, National Coordinator, ENVIS, MoEF & CC, GoI, had visited BNHS encouraging the participants to work for Nature Conservation.
To cover various aspects of Basic Ornithology, course is divided in classroom sessions at Hornbill house and field sessions in forest & wetland areas, in and around Mumbai region. This course is led by Dr. Girish Jathar, ENVIS Coordinator & ENVIS team i.e. Mr. Sagar Satpute, Ms. Sushmita Karmakar & Ms. Heta Akolkar. Experts included in this course are Dr. Rajat Bhargava, Dr. Raju Kasambe, Mr. Vithoba Hegde, Mr. Rohan Bhagat, Ms. Akshaya Mane, Ms. Parveen Shaikh, Mr. Mandar Sawant & Mr. Omkar Joshi.
This course has been covering the following topics:-
1. Bird Identification & Families
2. Laws Related To Birds In India
· Birds And NGOs
3. Birds and people
- Bird tradition in India
- Bird as resource
4. Bird rescue and rehabilitation
5. Bird tourism as a livelihood
6. Bird classification and diversity (Collections)
7. Bird evolution and history
8. Threatened birds of India
9. Field Visits
· Visit to forest
· Visit to wetland
10. Bird Behavior
11. Birds and their habitats
12. Bird Adaptation
13. Bird Migration
14. Basics of IT skills
- Introduction to Smartphone and its application in bird watching
- Use of Google earth – GPS
15. Basics of Instrumentation
- Binocular
- Spotting scope
- Camera
16. Adaptation in birds
17. Important Bird areas
18. RAMSAR Sites
On completion of this course, Certificates will be distributed to participants and few of them will be selected as Master trainers for the next batch of certificate course.