The Banasura Chilappan is a mountain bird of few certainties. It keeps to the deep shadows of Camel’s Hump, one of Wayanad’s most fragile highlands, where patches of moss-covered shola forest cling to slopes that tremble under climate extremes.
Sightings are rare. It slips between the foliage rather than commanding attention, a quiet messenger of the delicate pulse of the Western Ghats, to which this northern district of Kerala belongs.
Yet that very vulnerability has given the Chilappan a strange power. It has become a symbol of Wayanad’s ecological anxieties and of the existential threats circling its forests.
Camel’s Hump, the Chilappan’s home, now stands in the path of the controversial Wayanad tunnel road project, proposed as the third-largest road tunnel in the country.
The promise of faster connectivity conceals an enormous ecological cost. The plan requires blasting and tunnelling through a mountain range that has witnessed repeated landslides over recent years. Forest tracts will be cleared for construction areas, ventilation shafts, and road expansion.
Slopes already on the brink may lose what little stability they still hold. In a district where a single night of heavy rain can trigger deadly soil movement, many fear the tunnel is not infrastructure but the beginning of another tragedy.
It is against this backdrop that the first Wayanad Bird Festival, held from November 14 to 16 at Puliyarmala near Kalpetta, acquired a resonance far beyond its programme.
Organised by the Hume Centre for Ecology and Wildlife Biology, the festival framed birdwatching as a way of seeing the future. It nudged Wayanad to ask whether its landscapes can endure further ecological wounds when the climate emergency is already testing the district’s limits.
The organisers titled the event Heikki Banakku, using the Kattunayakan words for “bird” and “festival”. The choice was deliberate. It acknowledged that Wayanad’s tribal communities possess ecological wisdom that predates modern conservation science by centuries. For the Kattunayakans, birds are indicators of seasonal change. Their calls reveal shifts in rainfall, fruiting cycles, and forest health. Their presence or absence has long informed decisions around movement, foraging patterns, and community life.
By centring this vocabulary, the Hume Centre grounded the festival in cultural continuity rather than exoticising local communities as mere heritage. It affirmed that ecological understanding is woven into memory, practice, and lived experience. In Puliyarmala, an ornithologist, a schoolchild, a farmer, and a tribal elder stood together under the same canopy, learning not just from the birds but from one another.
Across three days, the festival set its participants on slow observation trails through the forests around Puliyarmala. Guides urged visitors to notice the details that often go unseen: a trogon resting in perfect stillness, a drongo announcing territory, a sunbird weaving its nest strand by strand, the uneasy silence that falls just before a spell of rain. These were not presented as pretty sightings but as ecological messages unfolding in real time.
Inside the Hume Centre campus, the Birder’s Stall transformed into a lively knowledge hub. Panels explained identification features, migration routes, breeding patterns, and emerging threats. A photography exhibition showcased local bird photographers who have documented Wayanad’s avian wealth through years of ecological decline.
Interactive installations helped children listen to forest sounds using simple, handmade devices. Nest models became teaching tools to understand how fragile avian homes are when trees are axed, undergrowth disappears, and weather patterns destabilise. Workshops on nest building, seemingly playful, often turned reflective as participants grasped how small habitat changes can alter the fate of entire species.
Academic sessions sharpened these experiences. Ornithologist C Sasikumar walked participants through the global history of bird study. Pramod P from SACON mapped India’s own ornithological evolution, explaining how traditional field observation blends today with advances in acoustics, tracking, and digital data.
Sessions by researchers such as Roshnath Ramesh and Ashwin Viswanathan underscored the importance of citizen science in understanding ecological change. In a district like Wayanad, where environmental shifts are fast and official monitoring is uneven, citizen-generated data can reveal patterns that government agencies often miss.
Cultural performances deepened the emotional undertone of the festival. Bavul music by Shanthi Priya and puppetry performances became talking points, weaving theatre, memory, and extinction into ecological storytelling. A theatrical piece by Tamil Nadu’s Arulagam team on vulture conservation struck a chord with Wayanad’s own fears around scavenger decline and forest degradation.
A festival stamp featuring a fern owl and a logo built around the Banasura Chilappan reminded participants of the district’s extraordinary avian heritage and the vulnerability of its species.
Perhaps the festival’s greatest contribution was its ability to turn ecological concern into collective reflection. In discussions, participants voiced unease about the district’s development trajectory. The tunnel road surfaced repeatedly as a symbol of the unresolved tension between progress and survival. Many asked whether the push for high-speed connectivity is worth the risk of destabilising a district already grappling with climate stress.
Conversations also examined the unregulated growth of tourism, the rising intensity of wildlife encounters, and the need for deeper cultural awareness around environmental stewardship. Underneath these discussions ran one shared conviction: Wayanad’s long-term defence against climate volatility lies in eco-restoration, not in engineering marvels.
By bringing together scientists, citizens, tribal communities, students, and policymakers, Heikki Banakku turned ecological debate into a genuinely public exercise.
Organisers hope to make the festival an annual event connected to Salim Ali’s birth anniversary. If sustained, Heikki Banakku could evolve into one of Kerala’s most vital citizen-driven ecological platforms. It could become an annual environmental “pulse check” for the Western Ghats, offering insights that blend science, indigenous knowledge, and community experience.
For this, the festival will need institutional backing, consistent funding, and active participation from schools, panchayats, and conservation bodies. The value of such a gathering lies in its ability to create a long-term, collective memory of environmental change.