Karwar: As part of NPCIL Environment Stewardship Program (ESP), Kaiga Generating station is regularly conducting its annual bird survey “Kaiga bird marathon” for the last seven years. This survey is conducted involving local volunteers and experts from all over India and is a scientific study of biodiversity especially avi fauna.
Last Sunday, the ESP volunteers initiated a butterfly survey around Kaiga power generating station for first time and first of its kind in this region. Five transects between Kaiga and Mallapur were identified to conduct the survey. A total of 15 volunteers participated in the survey. Each transect having a length of 4 to 5 km was covered in span of 4 hours. Photographs were taken to identify and confirm the presence of species. Nearly 70 species including Southern bird wing, the state butterfly of Karnataka, Brown owl, Blue pancy, common jezebel, peacock pancy were identified during the survey.
T. Premkumar convener of ESP informed that this is preliminary survey to collect baseline data and few more such surveys shall be done in future to compile a data base.