To Purnima Devi Barman, emancipation means that every women should be allowed to follow their heart. “To me that is freedom, to be able to do what you love,” she says
Guwahati-based wildlife biologist Purnima Devi Barman, popularly known as the ‘Stork Sister’, was recently named as TIME magazine’s Women of the Year 2025. This recent recognition is a tribute to this conservationist, who has spearheaded a movement to protect the endangered Greater Adjutant Stork, one of the largest storks in the world, which are mostly found in the three districts of Assam — Guwahati, Morigaon, and Nagaon.
After nearly two decades, Barman succeeded in increasing the numbers of this stork in the three districts from 27 to 252, while the overall population of the stork is now 1,800 in Assam.
Hargila army
At the core of her success is the ‘Hargila Army,’ a grassroots movement involving 20,000 village women, who work with her to actively safeguard hargila nesting trees, ensuring they are not cut, rescue fallen chicks, and weave conservation into their livelihoods by creating handicrafts that celebrate the stork. Her work has led to a remarkable increase in the stork population, with numbers doubling in key nesting sites.
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Barman’s unique approach to conservation lies in being able to blend wildlife protection with women’s empowerment to create a sustainable community-driven movement.
Getting women involved
In a chat with The Federal on the eve of Women’s Day, Barman said that she involved women in her movement to protect the stork since the bird was initially regarded as “bad luck” and an ill omen.
“I knew if I managed to transform the minds of these women and integrate the bird into their culture they would, in turn, influence their children and other members in the family and make a difference,” she recalled. So, Barman, who was doing her PhD from Gauhati University on the Greater Adjutant stork back in 2007, embarked on her life mission to save this bird on the verge of extinction and which her grandmother had taught her to love as a child.
To draw women into her fold, Barman started small, organising cooking competitions and games to show how everything in nature is interconnected be it a frog, tortoise, hargila, tiger, insect or a human.
“I showed them how we all are interconnected and if we lose our hargila, we will also be affected. I organised ‘baby showers’ for the new born hargilas. Initially, they laughed at me but slowly I won them around,” she recounted.
She involved the hargila during temple festivals giving it a sacred halo so that villagers will stop treating it as taboo. Barman even organised holy food as offerings for the hargila, made it part of the Gita Bhagavad celebration processions and celebrated the birth of baby hargilas during Janmashtami.
“It was a very slow process but the hargila eventually became part of the tradition among the village women in the three districts,” she said. By then, Barman had also became part of the global Women in Nature network and got funding from them and other wildlife conservation groups.
Empowering women
Today, nearly 18 years years later, Barman is proud of the hargila army she had created and the work they do in the three districts in Assam. The women are also empowered through various livelihood and capacity building programmes.
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“It’s like a sisterhood, these women who never strayed from the kitchen come for our meetings and they have an identity now. At the meetings, they forget their sadness and any sickness since the hargilas give them peace. Due to the Hargila Army, the number of storks has grown from 27 to 252 in these three districts and new nesting colonies have popped up in Nagaon. Currently, in entire Assam, there are around 1,800 storks,” she said.
For Barman, who received the Whitley Gold award (the Green Oscars) in 2024 and the UNEP champion of the Earth award under entrepreneurial vision in 2022, getting the Time magazine nod, her recent achievement, has only proved that if women set their heart on something they can achieve it.
“Emancipation means that every women should be allowed to follow their heart — to me that is freedom, to be able to do what you love. Confidence is so important, you need to believe in herself and be creative. When the hargila expands its wing it stretches out to 10 feet, so I tell women, be like the hargila birds. Dream big, fly high and free like the hargila. Our nature’s message is that we need to have this freedom,” Barman said.
Back in 2007, Barman was deeply stirred when she rescued a baby hargila which fell from a tree after its nest was cruelly destroyed by a tree cutter. When she felt the bird’s tiny heartbeat in her hands she knew this is what she had to do: save the hargila from extinction.
