Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh), 30 April (). Arif’s friend Saras will not be released in the sanctuary. K.K. Singh, Chief Conservator of Forests, Kanpur has denied any plan to release the storks into the sanctuary.
It is a female and Kanpur zoo considers it a lucky find as the female population of this bird is very less in this part of the country.
Singh said that the female stork, which was not eating properly since it was brought to the zoo on March 29, would be kept with the male stork.
The tests confirm that the bird is female and it is now being shifted to an enclosure next to the male stork, he said. Their behavior will be monitored. Two weeks, then it will be decided whether to move the male to his enclosure or not.
Dr Rajat Bhargava, an ornithologist with the Bombay Natural History Society, took a feather from the bird’s chest on 16 April and sent it to Secunderabad for DNA testing to determine its sex.
The unique friendship of Saras and Arif, a resident of Mandkha village in Amethi district, who saved the bird last year, has become a topic of discussion on social media.
The stork was found by Arif in his fields in February 2022 in an injured state, with blood oozing from his leg. He initially thought the stork was dead, but when he realized it was still breathing, took him home. He cleaned the wound and applied a mixture of turmeric and mustard on it. Then made a bamboo strip to keep the leg stable.
But even after getting healthy, the stork did not fly.
In the viral video, Saras was seen following Arif everywhere. Even when Arif was riding the bike, the bird flew up behind him.
Meanwhile, the forest department took the stork to Samaspur Bird Sanctuary on March 21, from where it went missing but was found later.
On March 29, it was sent to the Kanpur Zoo and a case was registered against Arif for violating the Wildlife Act.
Forest officials said Arif’s house was not the right place for a stork to live and he should have informed the local forest officials when he found the bird.
Meanwhile, not eating the bird properly remains a matter of concern for the zoo administration. Officials said that due to being close to humans, there has been a lot of change in the eating habits of the birds. “We are working on it, hopefully the bird will start eating raw food normally,” he said.
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