The Indian grey hornbill vanished from Gujarat’s Gir landscape roughly six decades ago, a casualty of habitat loss and the disappearance of the old, cavity-bearing trees the birds need to nest. A newly published study in the journal Birds confirms it is breeding there again, for the fourth year running, according to Newkerala and The Better India.
How the birds got back
The Junagadh forest circle reintroduced 40 Indian grey hornbills into Gir in two phases starting in 2021, sourcing the birds from the Aravalli forests where the species still survives. Eleven males were fitted with satellite transmitters so foresters could track their movement, habitat use and breeding behaviour after release, work led by Mohan Ram, Conservator of Forests for the Junagadh circle and a co-author of the new study. The results were slow at first: one breeding pair in the project’s first year. By the second year, three more pairs had formed, and the population has now bred successfully every year since.
Hornbills disappeared from the region mainly because of deforestation, hunting and the loss of large mature trees with natural cavities, the only kind of nest site the species will use. Their return is being read as a signal about Gir’s forest itself: hornbills nest only where enough old-growth trees remain standing, so a stable breeding population implies the surrounding forest structure has recovered enough to support it.
What it means for Gujarat
Gir is best known internationally as the last wild home of the Asiatic lion, and most conservation attention and funding in the landscape understandably follows the lion. The hornbill project is a reminder that Gir’s forest supports a wider set of species whose fortunes rise and fall with tree cover and habitat quality, not the charismatic megafauna alone. Hornbills also do ecological work of their own: they disperse the seeds of fruit-bearing trees over long distances as they move through the forest, which helps regenerate exactly the kind of mature tree cover the species itself depends on for nesting, a slow, self-reinforcing cycle if it holds.
For Junagadh district specifically, a successful, published, peer-reviewed reintroduction adds a second wildlife-recovery story to a year that has otherwise been dominated by lion-attack safety concerns around Girnar. It is a rare piece of unambiguously positive conservation news out of the same forest circle.
Outlook
Four consecutive breeding seasons is a meaningfully longer track record than a one-off release, but forest officials will want to see the population grow beyond the founding cohort and establish itself without further human intervention before calling the reintroduction fully self-sustaining. Continued satellite tracking of the tagged males should show over the next year or two whether the birds are expanding into new parts of the Gir landscape or staying concentrated near the original release sites.
Sources: Newkerala, The Better India
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.