VOCAL PROTEST: A mynah in the steel enclosure constructed in a Bastar forest

Disparate cultures the world over have quaint tales about talking birds and animals. They enchant not only children but adults too. But it could not have been a fairy tale that inspired doughty bureaucrats in Chhattisgarh to adopt a garrulous creature as the state bird. The fact is the Pahadi Mynah, Gracula religiosa peninsularis to ornithologists, among only 13 avian species that can imitate human speech, makes the forests of Bastar its home. It is also on the verge of extinction and its conservation has become imperative.

Having elevated the mynah to a special status, the Chhattisgarh Government has approached the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) to devise plans to save the species. But laughably, the state Forest Department has constructed a steel cage around a sal tree in Jagdalpur and kept three birds in it-ostensibly for breeding. A ZSI scientist who visited the site points out several deficiencies in the effort. For one, the cage is vertical, leaving little space for horizontal flight. There are, however, plans to build bigger, better cages at the Kanger Valley National Park near Jagdalpur.

There is, of course, a story behind Chhattisgarh's mynah. A popular tribal folktale in the Bastar region tells of a woodcutter who heard a voice saying, "You will find a pot of gold under the tree." It was a mynah. Feeling silly, but intrigued, he started digging and did indeed find the treasure. Like the apocryphal bird, the ones in Jagdalpur's cage too speak warmly to visitors. "Namaste," they say in the most human voice you could hear from a feathered species. The Pahadi Mynah is yellow-beaked with yellow markings on its black head, while the bigger Lurki Mynah has prominent earlobes and the smaller Nani Mynah, a yellow necklace round its black neck.

The mynah has an amazing ability to mimic human voice. While others like the Indonesian cockatoo, the Amazonian macaw, and the American, Indian and African grey parrots can be trained to talk like humans, the mynah requires no tutoring on human intonations. According to conservationist Ulla Hedeager, "The left hemisphere of the brain helps the bird to learn faster. Most birds depend on speech patterns and rhythm as method of learning." It is possible that the Bastar mynah has the most developed left hemisphere.

Human greed has jeopardised the longevity of this remarkable species. "Sal forests, the natural habitat of the mynah, have been destroyed in the past two decades," says Asad Rahmani, BNHS director. The mynah was found in abundance in the sal forests of Tokapal, Bhairamgarh, Antagarh, Narayanpur and Barsudin in Bastar and Dantewada districts. A Pahadi Mynah normally chooses a dry or drying sal tree to nest in. As the luxuriant forests were ravaged by contractors, jungle wardens and the Indian Railways, the feathered talker gradually found itself without a home.

Improper planning added to the problem. "We started replacing the sal with teak and eucalyptus, which we later found was not conducive for their breeding," admits Diwakar Mishra, conservator of forests, Bastar. Similarly, Jagdish Chandra Verma of the Bastar Society for Conservation of Nature points out, "Fruit trees, which attracted the mynah, have literally vanished." Chief Minister Ajit Jogi, who served as collecter of Raipur in the 1970s, also points out that these birds "were given as novel gifts to visiting officers in Bastar". These decimated the mynah population, already dwindling because the tribals have long hunted the bird for its tasty meat and feather.

The state also has to clamp down on the bird trade. Mynahs today sell for anything between Rs 10,000 and Rs 2 lakh depending on where it is being sold. Most of them are smuggled to Kolkata or Varanasi. An option is for the state Government to introduce a severe penal clause in the Forest Act. Saving the mynah is important. Not only because a beautiful bird could die out but also because the species has a unique link in nature's ecocycle. The importance of sal trees to Bastar's ecology is only now being fully understood, the pointer being the vanishing mynah. Moreover, doctors abroad have also begun using birds to teach deaf and mute children. If the efforts to save the winged chatterbox are serious and sustained, the babus will have ensured that it is not only from official calendars that the Bastar mynah speaks out.