Great Indian Bustard and Species Recovery Programmes: Conservation Status One-Pager for Exam Revision

Quick Answer: Great Indian Bustard at a Glance

The Great Indian Bustard (GIB) is the single most examined Indian bird in environment questions, so lock these facts now. It is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List — India’s most threatened large bird. It survives mainly in the Thar Desert and grasslands of Rajasthan (around the Desert National Park, Jaisalmer), with small satellite populations in Gujarat’s Kutch. It is the state bird of Rajasthan, enjoys the highest legal protection under Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, and anchors two recovery efforts examiners love to pair: Project GIB (Rajasthan, 2018) and the National Bustard Recovery Programme run by the MoEFCC. Read this table of facts once now, and once again the night before the exam.

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Great Indian Bustard: Basic Profile

• Scientific name: Ardeotis nigriceps — examiners pair this with the Kori Bustard or the Bengal Florican, so lock the species-to-name match now.
• Size: The heaviest flying bird in India; males weigh 8–14 kg and stand about 1 metre tall. If a question says “largest flying bird,” treat it as a trap — weight is the tested attribute.
• Diet: Omnivorous — grass seeds, insects (especially grasshoppers and beetles), lizards, rodents. Remember the omnivore point; it is a common true/false item.
• Habitat: Dry grasslands and semi-arid scrub — the “flagship species” of India’s grassland ecosystem. This label links directly to why grassland conservation questions cite the GIB.
• Behaviour: Males display at traditional lekking sites; the species is polygynous, and females alone incubate eggs and rear chicks — a matriarchal breeding system. Read “lek” carefully; it is the single most examined behavioural fact here.
• Breeding: Very slow reproductive rate — females typically lay one egg per year, which is why population recovery crawls and every programme (captivity, radar tagging, powerline burial) matters. This one-egg fact is the bridge between the profile and the recovery programmes below.

IUCN Status and Legal Protection

Memorise this table as a five-layer shield — IUCN, WPA, CITES, MoEFCC, CMS. Wild population estimates hover around 100–150 individuals, with the vast majority in Rajasthan — the reason the species faces an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. If an option says “Endangered,” reject it; the 2011 uplisting to Critically Endangered is the single most examined fact on this row.

Habitat and Current Distribution

• Rajasthan: The core surviving range — memorise this pairing first. The Thar Desert, especially around the Desert National Park (Jaisalmer/Barmer), holds the country’s only viable breeding population. If the examiner asks “where does the GIB survive today,” the answer is Rajasthan; everything else is residual.
• Gujarat: Small residual populations survive in the Kutch grasslands, anchored by the Kutch Bustard Sanctuary (Naliya, Kutch district). Do not confuse Naliya with the Jaisalmer headquarters — this Rajasthan-vs-Gujarat pairing is exactly how examiners phrase the trap.
• Historic range: Once widespread across the dry plains of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh — now locally extinct in most of these states. Occasional stray sightings persist in Maharashtra (Solapur region), which examiners like to test as “which former range state still reports sightings?”

Exam pointer: GIB habitat loss is the textbook example of grassland neglect — India’s grasslands are routinely classified as “wasteland” in revenue records, a label that encourages their diversion to agriculture, industry and solar projects. This single fact anchors most questions on why the bustard declined, so read it once tonight and again in your final revision.

Major Threats to the Great Indian Bustard

1. Power transmission lines: The single biggest current cause of adult mortality — and the examiner’s favourite trap. GIBs have poor frontal (binocular) vision and heavy bodies, so they cannot manoeuvre quickly in flight. Collisions with low-hanging wires, especially across the Thar’s rapidly expanding renewable-energy corridor, kill birds at alarming rates. WII studies attribute a large share of recorded GIB deaths to power-line collisions — remember the institute when a statement question names a source.
2. Habitat loss and fragmentation: Agricultural expansion, irrigation projects (the Indira Gandhi Canal reshaping Thar land use), roads, and solar/wind energy infrastructure carving up the grassland.
3. Hunting (historical): Historically hunted for meat; still a live threat in parts of Pakistan, where the species crosses over.
4. Grazing pressure and grassland degradation: Overgrazing and invasive species such as Prosopis juliflora degrade nesting habitat — a classic “which invasive species” MCQ pairing.
5. Low breeding rate: One egg per clutch and high nest predation (dogs, pigs, monitor lizards, foxes) mean the population cannot bounce back quickly — this is why recovery is slow even with protection.

Project Great Indian Bustard and Recovery Measures

• Project GIB (2018): Launched by the Rajasthan government with an outlay of about ₹12.9 crore. Read this as a three-pillar scheme — habitat protection, anti-poaching, and community involvement — all anchored in the Thar landscape. Examiners like the year and the state; anchor both.
• Conservation breeding centres: Set up at Sudasari (Jaisalmer) and Ramdevra in Rajasthan in collaboration with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII). Eggs collected from the wild are artificially hatched and chicks hand-reared — remember that the “egg collection protocol” was approved by the Supreme Court, a favourite legal-ecology crossover fact. The first captive-hatched chicks emerged in 2023–24.
• Firefly bee-diverters: Reflective “firefly” devices fitted on power lines in GIB territory to make wires visible to flying birds and cut collision deaths. This is the most examined mitigation detail — do not confuse it with generic bird diverters.
• Power line mitigation: Beyond diverters, court orders mandate undergrounding or re-routing of power lines in priority GIB areas — the collision-with-wires threat is the single biggest killer to quote in answers.
• Funding: The National Bustard Recovery Programme is bankrolled by CAMPA (Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority) funds plus MoEFCC’s species recovery component. CAMPA-as-conservation-funder is a recurring trap in matching-type questions.

Sources for verification: PIB releases on GIB conservation, MoEFCC, Wildlife Institute of India, and IUCN Red List.

Supreme Court Intervention on Power Lines

• 2021 order (M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India): The SC directed that all power lines — both low- and high-voltage — across 13,000 sq km of priority GIB habitat in Rajasthan and Gujarat be laid underground in “potential” habitats, in a phased manner.
• 2024 order: The Court modified its 2021 direction after an expert committee reported that undergrounding high-voltage lines was technically infeasible in certain stretches. It held that experts, not courts, should decide feasibility, permitting alternatives such as bird flight diverters and rerouting of lines in specified areas.

Mains angle: This is a textbook development vs. conservation case study — the Thar hosts both India’s flagship renewable-energy parks and the GIB’s last viable habitat. Deploy it for questions on sustainable energy siting, species recovery governance, and the limits of judicial environmentalism.

Table: Critically Endangered Indian Species and Recovery Programmes

Read this table row by row, then close the page and try to recall the programme paired with each species — examiners love swapping these pairings in matching-type questions. Watch the status column especially: Forest Owlet (Endangered, downlisted), Ganges River Dolphin (Endangered), and Snow Leopard (Vulnerable) are the three rows students most often mislabel as Critically Endangered, while the Himalayan Quail’s “possibly extinct” tag is a favourite one-liner trap.

Other Flagship Species Programmes

• Project Tiger (1973): India’s oldest flagship programme; now 50+ tiger reserves under NTCA.
• Project Elephant (1992): Elephant reserves and corridors; elephant declared the National Heritage Animal (2010).
• Project Dolphin (announced 2020, launched 2021): Conservation of river and oceanic dolphins, modelled on Project Tiger.
• Project Snow Leopard (2009): Landscape-based conservation in five Himalayan states (“Secure Himalaya” partnership with UNDP).
• Vulture Action Plan 2020–25: Targets removal of toxic veterinary drugs (diclofenac banned for veterinary use in 2006; aceclofenac restricted for animal use in 2023), and eight new vulture conservation breeding centres.

Conservation Bodies and Conventions

• National Board for Wildlife (NBWL): Statutory body under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, chaired by the Prime Minister. It is the apex body clearing development projects inside protected areas and within 10 km of their boundaries — examiners love pairing it with the Standing Committee, which does the actual project vetting.
• Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun: The lead scientific agency for GIB conservation breeding — it runs the breeding and release programme with Rajasthan Forest Department support. Read this name alongside “conservation breeding” in any MCQ.
• BNHS (Bombay Natural History Society): India’s oldest conservation NGO — runs vulture breeding centres (Pinjore, Bhopal, Rani, Guwahati) and conducted the historic bustard surveys. A classic examiner trap: swap BNHS and WII in the question stem.
• CITES (1975): Regulates international trade in wild species; the GIB sits on Appendix I (commercial trade prohibited). Remember: Appendix I = most endangered, trade banned.
• CMS / Bonn Convention (1979): Framework for migratory species conservation. India hosted COP-13 at Gandhinagar, 2020, where the GIB was pushed centre-stage — a favourite current-affairs hook for prelims.
• Convention on Biological Diversity (1992): The broader umbrella treaty; India’s National Biodiversity Action Plan feeds directly into species recovery targets like “Project GIB”. Pair it with Nagoya and Cartagena Protocols when revising.
• IUCN Red List categories (memorise in exact order): Extinct → Extinct in the Wild → Critically Endangered → Endangered → Vulnerable → Near Threatened → Least Concern (plus Data Deficient and Not Evaluated, which sit outside the ladder). Examiners test the sequence — and the GIB sits at Critically Endangered, one rung above Endangered.

Previous Year Questions and Exam Framing

UPSC Prelims has repeatedly tested IUCN status mismatches of Indian species — the Great Indian Bustard, Red-headed Vulture, and Snow Leopard have all appeared in traps built on the gap between what candidates “assume” and what the Red List actually says. Expect the examiner to pair a Schedule I fact with a wrong IUCN category and hope you gloss over it. Mains goes one level up: it frames the “development versus conservation” debate, species recovery programmes, and renewable energy siting conflicts — the GIB–power line issue is the ready-made case study. SSC and Banking stay factual: state bird, WPA Schedule, heaviest flying bird, Project GIB launch year. Read the MCQ below once now and once the night before the exam — it is the single most examined trap in this topic.

Sample MCQ: With reference to the Great Indian Bustard, consider the following statements: (1) It is the state bird of Rajasthan. (2) It is listed in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. (3) It is classified as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Which of the statements given above are correct? Answer: 1 and 2 only. Statement 3 is the planted trap — the GIB is Critically Endangered, not Endangered. This Endangered-versus-Critically Endangered confusion is precisely how examiners separate the prepared from the casual.

Sample Mains prompt: “The survival of the Great Indian Bustard highlights the conflict between renewable energy expansion and wildlife conservation. Discuss the recovery measures taken and suggest a way forward.” Build your answer skeleton from four anchors: the Supreme Court’s 2021 and 2024 orders on power lines in GIB habitat, Project GIB and its Rajasthan base, CAMPA funding, and firefly (bird) diverters on transmission lines. That combination — court order + programme + money + mitigation tech — is a 250-word answer that writes itself.

Memory Hooks and Revision Pointers

• Mnemonic “GIB-HIT”: Lock the four threats in one word — Habitat loss, Infrastructure/power lines, Take (hunting/poaching), plus slow breeding as the silent multiplier. Examiners love pairing “slow breeding” with the threat list, so never leave it out.
• Species–Scheme pairs: Memorise this chain — Bustard → Project GIB (2018); Dolphin → Project Dolphin (2020); Snow Leopard → Project Snow Leopard (2009); Vulture → Vulture Action Plan 2020–25; Tiger → Project Tiger (1973); Elephant → Project Elephant (1992). Match questions almost always test the year, not the name.
• GIB = Schedule I (WPA) + CITES Appendix I + IUCN Critically Endangered — a “triple-one” species. If a statement questions says “Schedule II” or “Endangered,” it is a trap.
• Supreme Court trail: SC 2021 ordered underground power lines in bustard habitat; SC 2024 reconsidered feasibility — expert committee to decide. Read these two together; questions contrast them directly.
• Heaviest flying bird in India: GIB. Globally, the Kori bustard rivals it among flying birds; the Ostrich is heavier but flightless — a classic examiner’s distinction.
• Three Critically Endangered Indian vultures: White-rumped, Indian (long-billed), Slender-billed — remember “W-I-S.” Diclofenac caused the crash; this trio is the most examined vulture fact.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is the Great Indian Bustard the state bird of any Indian state?

Yes — the GIB is the state bird of Rajasthan. Examiners also expect you to know its link to Gujarat’s grasslands (Kutch), where a small surviving population hangs on.

Q: Why are power transmission lines a major threat to the Great Indian Bustard?

GIBs have poor frontal vision and heavy bodies — they cannot spot or dodge wires in time, making collision a leading cause of adult deaths. The Supreme Court ordered undergrounding of power lines in priority GIB habitat in 2021 and revisited the order in 2024 on feasibility grounds. Both dates are fair game in prelims.

Q: What is the National Bustard Recovery Programme?

A centrally supported species recovery initiative of the MoEFCC, implemented with state cooperation (chiefly Rajasthan and Gujarat) and backed by CAMPA funds. It includes conservation breeding at WII-assisted centres in Jaisalmer — a favourite one-liner in current affairs sections.

Q: Which vulture species in India are Critically Endangered?

The White-rumped Vulture, Indian (long-billed) Vulture, and Slender-billed Vulture — the most examined trio in Indian vulture conservation. The driver is diclofenac poisoning; the government responded with the diclofenac ban (2006) and the Vulture Action Plan 2020–25. Pair species, cause, and response in one revision chain.

Q: How should aspirants revise IUCN statuses quickly for prelims?

Build a species–status–habitat–scheme table like the one above, prioritise Critically Endangered Indian species, and tag each with its flagship programme and legal schedule. Read the table once tonight and once the day before the exam — that is enough to lock it in.

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