bangalore a lot has been spoken about sparrows that were once a part of every household and have abandoned the cities completely but are they still abundant in rural areas ornithologists dont think soin addition to change in architecture of our houses that doesnt allow these tiny creatures to nest and increasing pollution levels in the city experts say pesticides are one of the prime reasons behind their depletion there has been no official documentation on population of sparrows or any enquiry behind their disappearancerecently the bombay natural history society bnhs has proposed a study on reasons behind the decline of this species to the environment and forests ministry but the latter is yet to act on ithouse sparrows live with humans and used to be common in towns villages and other fringe areas they never thrived in forests or wild areas because their primary sources of food are seeds insects and grains however member of karnataka state wildlife board and former principal scientist of bnhs says there is no shortage of food for these speciesalso change in architecture or increased pollution levels alone cannot make a species extinct but slow poisoning through pesticides and fertilizers can be an important factor earlier there was abundance of house sparrows you could find them everywhere and there is no major reason for them to disappear suddenly nobody hunts sparrows when they nest at houses food is in plenty for them too however the kind of food they are having could be fatal pesticides and fertilizers have damaged their genetic system and over time most have stopped reproducing he explainsdilawar mohammed former project officer of bnhs is engaged in a lone project to conserve house sparrows india is the largest user of pesticides and fertilizers i think the decline of sparrows in urban areas could be due to changing architeture but what about sparrow population in agricultural areas even in our backyards and municipal gardens we use chemicals to nurture exotic plants when sparrows feed on insects in the gardens they also consume poison he saidthe house sparrow is an indicator species that shows how our ecology and habitat is changing if the habitat of sparrows could change drastically due to pesticides and other issues then human beings are also going to face some consequences sparrows control insect population better than pesticides according to ornithologists from this theory if the use of pesticides is reduced then sparrows will breed faster and agriculture will also benefitaccording to hussain some sparrow pockets are still active recently he noticed a lot of sparrows at mangalore airport which is an unlikely place for them to thrive in coastal regions mangalore and western ghats which receive high rainfall the number of sparrows has not declined as much as in other areas this may be because the rain washes off pesticidesi think they will come back in huge numbers if we managed to preserve and nurture the few remaining sparrow pockets a lot of attention and funding