By Bijay Kumar Sah
Dhalkebar, Dec. 28: Sparrows, once ubiquitous in the yards, houses and farms of Terai districts, including Dhanusha, are now rarely seen in those areas these days.
The bird, which mainly nests on the holes in the wall or roof, is on the verge of disappearance due to rising pollution in the Terai belt.

As the roof heats up because of the growing heat, the eggs laid by the birds for breeding in their nests die owing to the hostile temperature, said ornithologists at a program organised at Dhalkebar in Dhanusha recently.
Temperatures in the Terai districts have been reaching more than 40 degrees Celsius for years now, putting sparrows out of our sights, the locals said.

Dev Narayan Mandal, chairman of the Mithila Wildlife Trust, which has been working in the field of bird and wildlife conservation, said that there used to be enough space in the traditional house for the sparrows to nest and cohabit with the human beings, but that’s not the case anymore as more and more people are building concrete houses.

Further jeopardizing their existence is the increasing noise, smoke and soil pollutions, he said. “Sparrows like insects, grasshoppers and grains grown in the field but growing use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides there have put them in peril. Water pollution is another cause behind their dwindling population.”
Suresh Sharma, who has been working in the field of environmental protection for a long time, said that the sparrows could not distinguish day from night due to the street lights in the market area.

“Compounding the problem is the radiation emitted from mobile phones and their towers. People hunting sparrows is also another cause,” he added.
“Sparrows are falsely believed to have the highest sex drive among the birds, and eating them will increase people’s sexual ability as well. So people hunt them for their meat, which is wrong,” he said.

Of the 32 species of sparrows found around the world, only five species are found in Nepal, including house sparrow, tree sparrow, Black-winged, Chestnut-shouldered sparrow and Spanish sparrows, said Ram Ashish Yadav, an environmentalist and a Constituent Assembly member of Province 2.