Great Indian Bustard

Great Indian bustard, (Ardeotis nigriceps), large bird of the bustard family (Otididae), one of the heaviest flying birds in the world. The great Indian bustard inhabits dry grasslands and scrublands on the Indian subcontinent; its largest populations are found in the Indian state of Rajasthan.

Conservation Status:

• In 1994 great Indian bustards were listed as an endangered species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
• By 2011, however, the population decline was so severe that the IUCN reclassified the species as critically endangered. An estimated 50 to 250 mature birds remain. 
• The largest concentration of great Indian bustards, perhaps 175 birds, occurs in the state of Rajasthan.
• Habitat loss and degradation appear to be the primary causes of decline. 
• Ecologists have estimated that approximately 90 percent of the species’s natural geographic range, which once spanned the majority of northwestern and west-central India, has been lost, fragmented by road-building and mining activities and transformed by irrigation and mechanized farming. 
• Many croplands that once produced sorghum and millet seeds, on which the great Indian bustard thrived, have become fields of sugarcane and cotton or grape orchards.
• Hunting and poaching have also contributed to the decrease in population. 
• These activities, combined with the species’s low fecundity and the pressure of natural predators, have left the great Indian bustard in a precarious position.
• In 2012 the Indian government launched Project Bustard, a national conservation program to protect the great Indian bustard, along with the Bengal florican (Houbaropsis bengalensis), the lesser florican (Sypheotides indicus), and their habitats from further declines. 
• The program was modeled after Project Tiger, a massive national effort initiated in the early 1970s to protect the tigers of India and their habitat.

Project Great Indian Bustard:

• Ojective of conservation of the remaining population of critically endangered Great Indian Bustard Ardeotis nigriceps, locally called Godawan, an ambitious conservation program namely, Project Great Indian Bustard
• Probably more vulnerable to extinction than even tiger, Great Indian Bustard, although it was brought under the umbrella of Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, it did not gain attention and remained BPL (Below Protection Line); the Project Bustard can be seen as a dawn of a new era for the conservation of neglected species like Great Indian Bustard which is also the state bird of Rajasthan.
• The rapid decline in its population across its distribution has already alarmed wildlife experts, ornithologists and bird lovers across the world. 
• The main reasons cited for its decline are habitat loss due to conversion of grasslands to other purposes, anthropogenic and related biotic disturbances during its breeding season and frequent poaching of the species as game bird.
• A grassland species, Great Indian Bustard, is often considered as indicators of the health of our grasslands or pulse of grassland ecosystem which are unfortunately remained neglected and being considered as wastelands. 

• These grasslands actually play an important role in the economy of the local communities as they support their livestock in terms of grazing.
• Roughly 15-20 percent of the livestock population of the world resides in India and one can imagine the dependence of them on the grasslands. 
• So there is direct dependence of a major part of human population on these dwindling grasslands of India.
• Once more than 1000 individuals few decades back, bustard population shrunk to 745 in the year 1978, 600 in 2001, 300 in 2008 and not more than 125 in the current year, 2013. 
• Being custodian of more than 50 percent population of bustard across the world, the desert state of Rajasthan does not want to be a mere spectator of the total extermination of the species across the globe, took up the responsibility for the conservation of this species and its habitat for our future generations by becoming a first state in launching the Project Bustard, initially in the DNP Sanctuary, located in Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan.

Way Forward:

1.     Intensive Patrolling by the field staff
2.     Developing intelligence network in the area.
3.     Making of check posts and barriers at strategic locations
4.     Creation of a flying squad headed by not below the rank of a range officer.
5.     Strengthening of existing Wireless Network
6.     Habitat protection through creation of some inviolate areas for the bird by making some closures of appropriate size and restricting anthropogenic pressures
7.     Habitat enrichment through planting grasses like Lasiurus sindicus(sewan grass)and providing water facilities like water gazellers.
8.     Incentives to farmers and local people for giving information and protection of the species.
9.     Involving local people in the eco-development and eco-tourism activities.
10. Generating mass awareness and sensitization among the masses.
11. Continuous monitoring of the species and habitat