Birds in decline as Spiti’s cold desert landscape changes

Before the sun rises over the jagged ridgelines around Kibber village in Himachal Pradesh’s Lahaul-Spiti district, 43-year-old Kalzang Gurmet is already on the move. On days when the monitoring site lies far from home, he leaves around five in the morning, walking across open steppe and rocky slopes for three to four hours. The early start matters. As the sun grows harsher, bird activity drops and sightings become fewer.

“Subah ka time sabse achha rehta hai,” he says in Hindi. (“Morning is the best time.”)

Kalzang Gurmet grew up in Kibber, studied history, completed a master’s degree, and returned to the village. Since 2007, he has worked with the Nature Conservation Foundation, helping scientists document birdlife across one of the highest inhabited mountain landscapes in the world.

Over the past two decades, Gurmet has played a key role in data collection and fieldwork. Along with Tanzin Thinley and other local field staff, he has walked the same transects summer after summer, counting birds in terrain where elevations exceed 4,000 metres and the growing season lasts only a few months.

That continuity, the same places, the same methods, year after year, now tells a troubling story.

The insights are documented in a study published in Ecological Applications in which the Nature Conservation Foundation researchers...

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