Species File: Exploring India’s biodiversity, one species at a time.
This bird was once a contender to be India’s national bird. Considered among the heaviest flying birds in the world, the great Indian bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps) is endemic to India. It inhabits dry, arid, and semi-arid grasslands and adjacent agricultural lands.
Today, fewer than 150 remain in the wild — mostly in Rajasthan and Gujarat, with smaller groups in Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the GIB is critically endangered. It receives the highest level of legal protection in India under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.
As grasslands shrink to make way for renewable energy projects and mines, the GIB has no place to go. The large-bodied birds also tend to fly low, leading to fatal collisions with electricity lines and wind turbines. Slow breeding rates, occasional poaching for meat and stray dog attacks compound these threats.
A Bustard Recovery Programme was launched in 2016. There are now 73 birds in conservation breeding centres, with five new chicks born this season. The long-term goal is wild release, but survival remains uncertain in the absence of safe habitat.
In the Abdasa grasslands of Kutch, a rare milestone unfolded on March 26, 2026 — the birth of a great Indian bustard (GIB) chick, the first in Gujarat in over a decade. Transported for over 700 kilometres, the egg was brought from a GIB breeding centre in neighbouring Rajasthan. Though 50 forest guards maintained constant surveillance of the chick, it reportedly vanished three weeks later, marking a major setback to the conservation operation.
“The GIB does not get as much attention to be saved as, say, the tiger, and so awareness is very important — about the bird in itself as well as its habitat, the grassland ecosystem,” Govind Sagar Bharadwaj former Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife Division), Jodhpur, said in an earlier story published in Mongabay-India.
Read more about the GIB in our stories on conservation status, balancing renewable energy and GIB conservation, and community involvement.
Banner image: A great Indian bustard. Image by Saurabh Sawant via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).
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