With an aim to promote ecotourism and preservation of birds,the 2nd National Chilika Bird Festival began at Mangalajodi on sunday.
About 145 bird watchers from across the country joined the two-day festival which includes photo exhibitions, seminars and a visit to Nalabana Island.
The event is jointly hosted by Odisha Tourism, Forest and Environment Department and Chilika Development Authority.
Odisha Tourism and Culture Minister Ashok Chandra Panda inaugurated the photo exhibition in the presence of Prasanna Kumar Patasani, MP-Bhubaneswar, Rajendra Kumar Sahoo, MLA Khurda, R P Singh, Director, Odisha Tourism and Nirmal Chandra Mishra, Collector and District Magistrate, Khurda.
Andrew Sebastian,the co-founder of Asian Birds Fair enlightened the audience about the value of preserving birds and praised the government for organising such festival.
Vishal K. Dev, Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Odisha Tourism said during the event, “ We want to promote and raise awareness about Chilika being the largest repository of migratory birds in Asia. Our focus is to make Odisha as one of the hotspots for Ecotourism. We plan to make this event bigger and better in future.”
Forest and Environment Secretary Suresh Mohapatra said, “We are extremely happy to have participants from all over the country. This year we have around 1 million migratory birds present in Chilika. We are recognising the efforts by the locals in preserving Chilika Lake and want to empower them by helping them with livelihood in form of sustainable tourism.”
“Every participant of the Chilika National Bird Festival is an ambassador for this place and we hope the message spreads,” he added.
On this occasion, Chilika Development Authority also released its book ‘Fish and Shellfish Diversity and it’s Sustainable Management in Chilika Lake.’
Mangalajodi Ecotourism Group was conferred with ‘The National Chilika Bird Festival Award’for their dynamic contribution to bird protection.
This year Chilika attracted record number of birds footfall as a consequence of removal of illegal gheries from the lake by the Forest department.
