Saving India’s storks: How smelly pests became a point of pride
Dressed in bluejeans and a gray top, Purnima Devi Barman carefully balances her feet as she clambers down from the 80-foot-high bamboo platform.
She’s been looking for greater adjutant storks: huge, plain-looking scavengers named for their stiff-legged, almost military gait. For years, the greater adjutants built their nests in tall trees fringing the shallow waters in uninhabited wetlands across Assam, one of their last habitats.
But early in her career as a conservationist, Dr. Barman noticed a change.
“When I started research with these storks for my Ph.D. program, I spotted very few storks compared to the large numbers I had seen as a
Protecting a “pest”Prayers for storks
