Kerala researchers win international grant for hornbill conservation

Malabar Grey Hornbill
| Photo Credit: SPL

A team of researchers from Kerala has been awarded the Future Conservationist Award by the Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP) for their project on conserving the Malabar Grey Hornbill, an endemic and vulnerable species of the Western Ghats. The team, Ahirbudhnyan M., Shireen Sithara, Akshay Moti, and Sivasankari G., will use the grant to implement a community-driven conservation initiative in the Wayanad landscape, aiming to protect the hornbill beyond the boundaries of protected areas.

The CLP Future Conservationist Award, a partnership of three biodiversity conservation organisations Fauna & Flora International, BirdLife International and the Wildlife Conservation Society, supports promising young conservationists with less than five years of professional experience, offering funding and tailored mentoring to lead impactful projects. The programme nurtures leadership, communication, and project management skills, empowering individuals to work with communities and drive long-term conservation change. The team’s project emphasises community participation to raise awareness about the Malabar Grey Hornbill’s ecological role.

Through educational programmes and workshops, the project aims to build local support for hornbill conservation. Surveys will be conducted to understand public perceptions and encourage behaviour change.

Mapping nesting trees

A focus of the initiative is mapping nesting trees and habitats of the Malabar Grey Hornbill in human-modified landscapes. By identifying nesting sites and assessing habitat quality and threats, the team hopes to develop conservation strategies tailored to the species’ needs. The project also explores the nesting preferences of hornbills, which rely on secondary cavities — hollows in trees originally made by primary cavity nesters like woodpeckers — or natural ones. Once a pair finds a suitable cavity, they may use it repeatedly across breeding seasons and even throughout their lifetime. This makes the availability of cavity-bearing trees vital to the species’ reproductive success.

“This study builds on an earlier work from our team,” says Peroth Balakrishnan, Head of the Department of Wildlife Biology at the Kerala Forest Research Institute (KFRI), who is mentoring the project. “Our earlier research identified over 500 vertebrate species dependent on tree cavities across India and showed that Malabar Grey Hornbill often nests outside protected areas, including in plantations. This underscores the critical need to protect cavity-bearing trees in human-used habitats, which are essential for the survival of hornbills and many other cavity-nesting vertebrates.” Rohit Naniwadekar of the Nature Conservation Foundation also mentors the team, supporting their work on hornbill biology and conservation.

The Malabar Grey Hornbill (Ocyceros griseus) is an iconic species that symbolises the rich biodiversity of the Western Ghats. Though largely restricted to evergreen forests, these birds are found in plantations and agricultural areas, where their nesting opportunities are often limited. The current study focusses on hornbill populations within plantations in the Wayanad region, aiming to balance conservation with local land use.

“We hope this project becomes a model for conserving biodiversity outside protected areas by involving the communities that share space with wildlife,” says Ahirbudhnyan, the project lead and alumni of the Wildlife Biology Department of the KFRI.