Endangered: Poaching, poisoning has threatened the survival of the peacock. Information gathering on the status of the India's national bird, the peacock, is to be intensified in the wake of increasing concern over their numbers and the absence of any base data on them. The status assessment, initiated by the Endangered Species Management Department of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in 2004, is still underway. The National Board for Wildlife, headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has approved a rapid survey to assess the current status of the peacock under the Save the National Bird campaign. The peacock is a pheasant species-- one of the 17 others found in India-- which include some of the most useful and colourful birds in the world such as Red Jungle fowl and Monal pheasant. "The peacock was once widely distributed and abundant in the Indian mainland except for the Himalayan ranges and the North-East. In recent years, there has been increasing concern about its declining status,' observe B.C.Choudhury and S.Sathyakumar of the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, writing about the bird in a publication brought out on the occasion of the recent Jaipur Birding Fair which was dedicated to the peacock. "In the recent years there has been increasing concern about its declining status. The reports of peacock mortality due to poaching, increased use of pesticides in agricultural fields and retaliatory killing by farmers for crop damages need field verification,' Prof.Choudhury notes. In response to a questionnaire from WII to the authorities of 448 protected areas (PAs) in the peacock range in the country, till June 2007, 189 PAs reported the presence of peacock in their area. "Of these 60 PAs reported peacock population to be increasing, 32 PAs stable population and 5 PAs decreasing number of birds. The remaining considers their population to be unknown. Only 10 per cent PAs reported instances of poaching/trade in peafowl feathers,' points out Prof. Choudhury. "In a sense the pheasants can well be known as India's national birds and their status is a matter of grave concern. The destruction of forests all over the country, and specially in the Himalayan region, has caused extensive loss of habitats for all pheasant species,' Samar Singh, president of World Pheasant Association-India, observes. According to him the single most serious threat to the pheasant species is the loss of habitat followed by hunting and trapping. "Five of the 17 pheasant species found in India are threatened and the others are also not really secure in their habitats,' Mr.Singh, a pioneer in pheasant conservation in the country, says. Barring the peacock, the Red Jungle fowl and the Grey Jungle fowl, rest of the pheasant species in the country belong to the high altitude States. One or the other pheasant species is the State bird in Uttrakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Orissa, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim. "Pheasants in general seek isolation and they live in remote areas away from human habitation. However of late there are encroachments in higher altitude areas as well,' Peter G. Kaestner, well-known ornithologist and Consul General at the US Embassy in New Delhi, explains talking about the status of the birds. The feathers and plumes of many pheasants, especially the Monal and Kaleej, are in high demand as decoration for headgear and many other purposes in the Himalayan communities and the pheasant meat is considered a delicacy.'