GUWAHATI: Three villages in Nagaland, which have shunned hunting and taken to protecting the migratory bird, Amur falcon , have taken another stride in providing a safe roosting place for these small raptors by switching to terrace farming from shifting cultivation.It has been a decade now that guns have fallen silent in the villages of Yaongyimchen, Alayong and Sanglu in Longleng district, about 232 km from state capital Kohima . Earlier, these birds would get hunted and hundreds of them would die when they would fly down to Nagaland to roost in winter. The hunting community, now the keepers of the birds, manage the Yaongyimchen Community Biodiversity Conserved Area (YCBCA)-spread over 1,000 hectare of pristine forest land.Village heads in September sought the support of villagers to take up a permanent way of agriculture so that they could provide a better habitat to the birds. There are over 370 families in these villages. L Nuklu Phom, chairman and team leader of Lemsachenlok (a society that runs the conservation at YCBCA), said during at a meeting on November 15 in Yaongyimchen, terrace farming was formally launched along with organic species production, community watchtower and community education projects."We consulted the villagers and formally accepted the new type of cultivation for providing better habitat to the birds," said Phom.Nagaland additional chief secretary and finance commissioner Temjen Toy, principal secretary of school education Menukhol John, managing trustee of Nagaland Wildlife & Biodiversity Conservation Trust, Bano Haralu and representatives of three village councils attended the meeting.Phom said terrace cultivation is being implemented with the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) for encouraging the community to take up multi-cropping. He said multi-cropping will also help the community earn good revenue.More than two million Amur falcons take one of the longest flights from Mongolia, Northern China and Southeastern Siberia , to arrive in YCBCA. They then proceed to South Africa. Thousands of birds have already arrived at YCBCA this year. The community also celebrated the second anniversary of the return of the statellite-tagged Amur falcon-'Longleng'- this month. The bird, tagged in 2016, covered a distance of 44,000 km.

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