Mumbai: Award winning wildlife photographer and veteran journalist Sunjoy Monga was to go birding in Lokhandwala this weekend. Unfortunately, he passed away on Wednesday, May 30, succumbing to a nine-year battle with blood cancer.
Sunjoy Monga was 63-years-old. His death has left nature lovers and activists in deep shock. Apart from his award-winning photography, Sunjoy Monga also left his footprints in ‘Bird Race’ — an annual bird-spotting event that inspired the love of birds among hundreds of Mumbaikars over the years.
Bird race in Mumbai
In 2005, Monga launched Mumbai’s first-ever bird race—an event that has since become an annual tradition known as ‘Wings – Birds of India.’
Monga’s idea of launching a bird race was inspired by the Hong Kong bird race. As part of the Mumbai race, Monga invited birdwatchers to dedicate 12 hours to spotting as many bird species as possible.
The inaugural race saw around 100 enthusiasts record 277 different species in and around Mumbai. Since then, Monga expanded the event to 33 cities across India, with the tradition still thriving today.
How did Sunjoy Monga start his bird-watching journey?
As per experts, Sunjoy Monga started his bird-watching journey with other prominent names in the field such as Humayun Abdulali and Salim Ali.
“A great tree has fallen,” Pravin Subramanian, who organised the Bird Race with Monga since 2007, told HT. “Back then, there were only two books for bird enthusiasts to follow. Monga filled this void by writing comprehensible books for all,” added the Bird Race co-organiser.
Monga’s career
Sunjoy Monga served for several years on the governing council of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), a testament to his deep-rooted expertise as a naturalist.
Monga’s knowledge and passion for the environment made him a valuable contributor to several key conservation bodies. The 63-year-old was also a member of the Executive Committee of the MMRDA’s Environment Improvement Society, the Maharashtra Nature Park Society, and also held the honorary post of Warden at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park.
Raju Kasambe, programme manager, lands, at The Nature Conservancy, an environmental organisation, told HT: “At the end of each race, Sunjoy would put together an amusing presentation with a lot of takeaways. It took a lot of grit in the early years to put together a checklist of birds and hand it over to 30 groups, then analyse each sheet and the data, but he did it every year. A lot it has migrated to the e-bird app.”