IWN Daily Digest — Thursday, 8 October 2026

Himalayan monals at the busy tourist spot of Chopta call at a higher pitch than those in the quieter Madmaheshwar Valley, both inside Kedarnath Musk Deer Sanctuary in Uttarakhand, according to research from Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University that BBC News highlighted on Tuesday, a finding that arrives alongside warnings that tourism and infrastructure are also shrinking the bird’s habitat.

As reported by BBC News:

“These two studies give a useful warning for other more vulnerable species”

The remark came from an environmental practitioner working on ecology and climate issues in the Himalayas, speaking about two studies by Indian researchers carried out over five years. The Himalayan monal is a pheasant of the Himalayan mountain forests, the male decked in green, blue and copper feathers, and it is Uttarakhand’s state bird and Nepal’s national bird.

The sound study recorded more than 700 monal calls in the two valleys, starting in April 2023, and measured pitch, call length and background noise. Birds in the noisier area produced calls with significantly higher peak frequencies. The Better India, which covered the paper published in the journal Behavioural Processes, reported that the median peak frequency was about 171 Hz higher in the noisier habitat.

Shrinking Habitat

Rajeev Lochan led both studies, and his team at the university includes Dinesh Kumar Sharma and Anand Kumar. The second study found monals moving higher up the mountains as alpine meadows become crowded, and it projects that climate change will keep shrinking and destabilising the bird’s habitat in the Indian Himalayas through 2100 under multiple climate scenarios. The modelling covered Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

A related 2025 paper in Scientific Reports by the same authors, according to The Better India, projected that more than 14% of currently suitable habitat could become unsuitable between 2041 and 2070 under one climate scenario.

Lochan was careful about what the calls show. “This does not mean that the species has undergone a permanent or evolutionary change in its vocal frequency,” he told the BBC, and The Better India noted that the study does not show the altered calls reduce mating success or affect the population. The monal is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.

Sources: BBC News (via finwire.io) · The Better India

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