Punjab: A decade after declaring the Northern Goshawk or ‘Baz’, associated with Guru Gobind Singh, as the state bird of Punjab, the government has finally accepted the fact that it ‘must do a better job to find the missing bird, preferably in pairs’. Finally, after years of neglect, the Punjab government plans to form a special committee to locate the bird, which it has not been able to do in the last 10 years. In 1989, the state government had wrongly declared the ‘Eastern Goshawk’ as the state bird, which was corrected to Northern Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) in 2015, but in both cases there has never been any ‘sighting’ and neither is there any bird on display. There is ‘no record of any sighting’ of this bird in the state, nor have serious efforts been made to procure these birds. The ‘hawk’ associated with Guru Gobind Singh has been rarely seen in Punjab, with the wildlife department having “no recorded information available” in the last decade.
Now, the department is planning to form a special committee to trace the bird and take steps to bring in its pair. Chief Wildlife Warden Dharminder Sharma said, “Necessary permission will be taken from the Ministry of Environment and Forests and Central Zoo Authority to capture a hawk from the forest once it is traced or sighted by experts. We are making serious efforts to capture it in pairs so that residents get a chance to see this rare bird, which has historical and religious significance.” “We also appeal to those who have any photograph or any relevant sighting of this bird of prey to contact us,” he added. Experts said that apart from dwindling hunting grounds, the bird has moved to the upper Himalayan region mainly due to poaching and habitat destruction.
“The bird was earlier seen in the foothills of Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand, but recently there have been reports of very few sightings of it. The bird is kept in captivity in the Middle East and some eastern European countries,” said Jaskaran Sandhu, a former member of the state wildlife board and an avid wildlife photographer. There is a falcon breeding centre at Chattbir zoo in Punjab, but it has no ‘falcon’. In July 2011, the department prepared a proposal for exchange of creatures with Lahore zoo. However, the plan could not materialise due to diplomatic issues. Sikh scholars have confirmed that the bird finds mention in several books on Guru Gobind Singh. “It (falcon) is a symbol of power and strength. So, it is important that the coming generations are shown this bird and made aware about it. The government, SGPC and all Punjabis who can help the state get this bird should come forward,” said former SGPC chief and Sikh scholar Kripal Singh Badungar. In 2015, the government issued a notification declaring the Northern Goshawk as the state bird, correcting an anomaly in the notification of March 15, 1989. Earlier, the government had declared the Eastern Goshawk as the official bird, which according to ornithologists has no connection with Punjab.
