PfA Wildlife Rescue and Conservation Centre

Throughout the history of human civilization, humans have ventured further and further into the wild, ‘taming’ it to suit our needs. Several species of animals such as dogs and cattle have been domesticated for thousands of years as we have depended on these animals for milk, meat, transport, agriculture, and an array of other resources and services. As we have evolved from a hunter-gatherer species to an agricultural society and then finally to an industrial civilization, this has transformed the ways in which we relate to our environment and the wildlife that lives amongst it. For centuries now, we have organised ourselves around hotbeds of civilization: our cities. These urban centers have grown over years, developing into jungles of concrete buildings and asphalt roads that snake in between them, with pockets of greenery scattered around. In this novel ecosystem, several non-domesticated creatures that make up the urban wildlife have taken to various adaptations that have aided th...

The house sparrow, at once a common sight in and around any urban household, is now hardly seen. If you grew up in Bangalore during the Eighties and Nineties, when it still maintained its reputation as the Garden City of India, you would be hard-pressed to move through a residential area without encountering the sight of the little bird hopping and flying among the trees, or the melodious sound of its chirps and twitters. Sparrows were as commonplace a sight as the Rock Pigeon and could be spotted nesting in crevices among buildings and feeding on insects in lawns and backyards. However, the cities in India have seen a decline in sparrow population over the years. Where have all the sparrows gone? Sparrows are ubiquitous throughout the world, found in most countries. They belong to an order of birds known as Passerines, which includes more than half of all bird species and is distinguished by the arrangement of their toes: three facing forward and one facing backward, which facilitates...