By Neena Bhandari
Bharatpur, India 10.02.1997 (IPS): Dodging rockets in Afghanistan and poachers in Pakistan, three Siberian cranes — India’s most famous winged visitors — touched down last November at their winter home here in the Ramsar Wetland Site of Bharatpur in the western Indian state of Rajasthan.
The Siberian cranes or Grus Leucogeranus were the first since 1994 to make the perilous 6,000-km long journey from south of the Arctic Circle, through Central Asia to India. In the 1960s, at least 200 used to regularly winter in Bharatpur’s famed Keoladeo National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.