Great Indian Bustard (GIB)

About Great Indian Bustard (GIB)

• It is endemic to the Indian subcontinent.
• Habitat: open grasslands, arid plains and scrub forests.
• Range: Its population is confined mostly to Rajasthan and Gujarat. Small population found in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
• Features:
  • Males have a distinctive black crown, a long neck, and a buff-coloured body with white underparts.
  • Females are generally smaller and lack the prominent black crown.
  • One of the heaviest flying birds, weighing between 10 to 15 kg.
  • It is primarily omnivorous. It feeds on insects like grasshoppers, beetles and sometimes even small rodents and reptiles. It also feeds on grass seeds.

• Conservation Status
  • IUCN status: Critically Endangered
  • Wildlife Protection Act, 1972: Schedule I
  • CITES: Appendix 1
  • Covered under species recovery program.
  • Only less than 150 GIBs are left in the wild and almost exclusively restricted to India.
• Threats:
  • Power lines (disturbs visibility)
  • Habitat destruction and fragmentation & Overgrazing.
• Steps taken to conserve GIB:
  • Species Recovery Programme: It is kept in the species recovery programme under the Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC).

Firefly Bird Diverters:

• Firefly bird diverters are flaps installed on power lines.
• They work as reflectors for bird species like the GIB. Birds can spot them from a distance of about 50 meters and change their path of flight to avoid collision with power lines.

Artificial Hatching:

• The conservation breeding programme started in 2019 by collecting eggs from the wild and artificially hatching them.
• The first chick, named ‘Uno,’ hatched on 21 June 2019. Eight more chicks were hatched that year and raised and monitored. A total of 29 GIBs have been housed in the two breeding centres in Rajasthan.

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