02-04-2025
- General
- National Geographic
The 'stork sisters' are saving one of India's largest and rarest birds
Known locally as hargila, the threatened Greater Adjutant stork has found a champion in an unlikely place: the Harglia Army, a group of about 20,000 rural women in India turned conservationists. Since 2014, the women have worked tirelessly to give the storks a desperately needed reputational revamp.
Once reviled as filthy, adjutants prey on fish, frogs, snakes, rats, and smaller birds like ducks, rummaging through landfills looking for carcasses (hargila translates to bone swallower). Its feeding habits cemented its reputation as unsanitary, a perception that led to a rapid population decline of the adjutant, one of the world's largest and rarest storks. Native to India's floodplains in Assam and Bihar, in 2023, it was recently listed as 'near threatened' by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Though its population remains fragile, it is increasing.
Members of the Hargila Army in Dadara Village, Assam, India, throw a baby shower for Greater Adjutant stork chicks. This one was held on December 12, 2024.
That's due in large part to the Hargila Army and its founder, wildlife biologist Dr. Purnima Devi Barman who saw the Greater Adjutant differently. Barman says she fell 'deeply in love' with the birds.
"My grandma first introduced me to them in our village paddy fields, where they would flock," she recalls.
Barman, who won the Whitely Gold Award in 2024, an international grant given to recognize major contributions to conservation, has made protecting the storks her life's mission. Under her guidance, and the help of the Hargila Army, the adjutant's numbers have quadrupled in Assam to more than 1,800 birds.
