Eaglenest Bird Festival 2026 to celebrate biodiversity, culture and living heritage of Arunachal’s Eastern Himalayas

The Eaglenest Bird Festival 2026, a community-led celebration of biodiversity, culture, and conservation, will be held from February 8 to 10 in Kamenbari, near the Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary along the Assam–Arunachal Pradesh border.

Organised by the Eaglenest Bird Festival Organising Committee, the festival is set in one of the world’s most significant biodiversity hotspots. The sanctuary is internationally recognised for its exceptional avian diversity, with over 450 recorded bird species, including the rare Bugun Liocichla, discovered in the region in 2006.

Conceived as a grassroots conservation initiative, the festival aims to promote biodiversity awareness, encourage responsible eco-tourism, and create platforms for indigenous knowledge-sharing and youth participation. The region is home to the Shertukpen tribe and also serves as an important winter migration corridor for several bird species.

The three-day festival will feature immersive nature-based experiences and cultural engagements at the Eaglenest Jungle Retreat.

Activities on February 8 include birdwatching, an elephant trail walk, butterfly observation, a bird call workshop, and evening cultural interactions. February 9 will see the formal inauguration, along with ancestral trail storytelling sessions and a talk on man–elephant coexistence. The festival will conclude on February 10 with a 12-kilometre trek to Bompu along the historic Dalai Lama Trail.

The Dalai Lama Trail commemorates the route taken by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama in 1959 during his journey from Tibet into India. The escape route passed through Tibet’s Tsona district and culminated at Khen-Dze-Mani under the Zemithang circle in Tawang district, where he and his entourage were officially received on March 31, 1959 by Indian authorities, including the political officer of Tawang, the Assam Rifles, and local residents. Today, the trail stands as a symbol of peace, resilience, and India’s humanitarian legacy.

The Eaglenest landscape holds deep historical and cultural significance, having long functioned as a cultural corridor between Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. For generations, indigenous communities engaged in barter-based exchanges of forest produce, medicinal herbs, grains, salt, handcrafted tools, and textiles, practices rooted in trust, seasonal movement, and shared dependence on forest ecosystems.

Organisers say the Eaglenest Bird Festival represents a rare intersection of conservation, community livelihoods, borderland history, and cultural harmony. They emphasise that greater public engagement is essential to recognising the region’s vital role in India’s biodiversity conservation, climate resilience, and cultural continuity, areas that remain underappreciated in mainstream narratives.

The organising committee added that the festival offers visitors an opportunity to engage directly with community elders, conservationists, historians, and youth participants, while experiencing the region’s rich ecological and cultural heritage first-hand.