In Golaghat, a district in Assam, the first light of morning finds more than the usual stirrings of the town. Among the narrow lanes and schoolyards, a persistent will hums through the air. Over 500 students of Bongaon Chola High School move with purpose, carrying small saplings and terracotta nesting platforms. They aim to protect the birds whose lives are being imperilled by the rapid growth of urbanisation.
The initiative, known as ‘Bird Nest Conservation Day’, began in 2025 when a handful of students, guided by their teachers, noticed that as concrete replaced trees, many birds were struggling to find safe places to nest.
They understood that without intervention, the city’s burgeoning growth would slowly silence the delicate chorus of feathered life that had long accompanied their mornings.
At first, the students created terracotta platforms, carefully positioned on trees and rooftops to offer birds a secure place to lay their eggs. This year, their vision has expanded. They plant indigenous trees, whose branches provide both shelter and food, weaving a network of refuge across the school grounds and nearby streets. Every action is deliberate, and every gesture is a negotiation between human ambition and the natural world.
The students’ efforts are not limited to planting or construction. They hold exhibitions, perform dance dramas, and host discussions, inviting the community to witness the fragile beauty that exists alongside their daily lives.
Their work has gathered interest far beyond Golaghat, inspiring schools in Chinatoli and even the riverine district of Majuli to organise similar conservation efforts. Across the region, young people are beginning to see themselves as keepers of a delicate ecological balance.
For the birds, these interventions offer survival. For the students, they offer something equally necessary, a sense of agency, a tangible connection to the living world around them. In a landscape where progress often threatens to obliterate the natural, this generation of students is learning that careful, considered action can allow both humans and wildlife to flourish.
And so, as the sun rises over Assam, the saplings cast long shadows across the schoolyard, and the nesting platforms wait patiently in the branches. Somewhere above, birds perch, surveying the spaces now cautiously restored for them, as the young guardians of Golaghat continue their work, season by season, nest by nest.
Source:
‘Over 500 students in Assam lead initiative to protect birds from rapid urbanisation’: by Tathagata Banerjee for The Times of India, Published on 15th February, 2026.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: thebetterindia.com
