Dec. 19: Reports of more chicken deaths from Gajole block reached the authorities in Malda town today when they were planning to wrap up the culling operation in bird flu-hit Narhatta.
Gram panchayat pradhan Sahanur Biswas said 6,000 chickens had died in Gajole. “We have two women’s self-help groups, Rupali and Milan. Each member of the two groups had 350-400 birds. They were making good profit by selling the eggs. But they have lost all the chickens,” he said.
The animal resource development department deputy director in Malda, Nikhil Kumar Shit, said: “We have collected blood samples from the dead birds in the Bairgachhi I gram panchayat area and have sent them to Calcutta for tests.”
Bairgachhi is only 5km from Narhatta. Most poultry birds within 3km of Narhatta have been culled.
A mop-up operation was about to begin to kill “4,000-5,000 chickens that the villagers have not handed over”, Malda district magistrate Sridhar Ghosh said. “Our culling teams will go on a house-to-house search for these birds.”
Sanctuary worry
The forest department in North Dinajpur is worried about the 90,000 migratory birds in the Kulik sanctuary because infected chickens might make it inside with picnickers who throng the place.
Raiganj divisional forest officer Ashis Sen said the department had been on alert since the outbreak in Assam, but with the disease confirmed in a Malda pocket 50km away, the worries have grown. “We are trying to keep the area clean. Everyday, our men are clearing droppings from beneath the trees and spraying the sanctuary with bleaching power.”
The biggest worry, though, is that chickens are clandestinely ferried to areas near the sanctuary by Malda traders. Picnickers bring live chickens into the forest and slaughter them, putting at risk the large population of open bill storks, cormorants and night herons.
“If there is an avian flu outbreak, it is likely that the birds will not return to the forest for many years,” the forest officer said.
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