Gujarat now has a written target for the Great Indian Bustard: more than 30 birds living wild in Kutch, on 200 to 500 sq km of safe, unbroken grassland. Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav released the Gujarat Action Plan for the species at Naliya in Kachchh on 13 September, with state Forest and Environment Minister Arjun Modhwadia beside him, and opened a soft release centre built to receive captive-bred birds from Rajasthan, DeshGujarat and IANS reported.
Set that target against today’s count. Kutch has three wild females, and forest staff have not recorded a male since 2016, ThePrint reported in May. Between 2007 and 2010 the same grasslands held 48 birds. Across India, fewer than 150 remain in the wild, most of them in Rajasthan’s Thar.
What the plan commits to
The Wildlife Institute of India (WII) drew up the plan with the Gujarat Forest Department. Its first priority is the Lala-Rawa landscape near Naliya, about 200 sq km. The work falls into five buckets: habitat restoration, grazing management, clearing invasive plants, controlling predators and reducing the danger from power lines and other infrastructure.
Some of it has already started. Officials told the minister that crews have cleared about 11 sq km of grassland choked by Prosopis juliflora, the thorny gando baval that turns open grassland into scrub, and have built 30 km of predator-proof fencing around a 15 sq km enclosure. Yadav also flagged off 33 patrol and rescue vehicles for the Kachchh forest circle.
The Kutch Bustard Sanctuary at Lala covers roughly 2 sq km. The plan’s first-phase area is about a hundred times larger, and its upper goal of 500 sq km is bigger still. Birds on that much land will live mostly among fields and grazing commons, not inside a protected boundary. That explains why Yadav sat with representatives of the Jat Sumra and Darbar communities at a khatala sabha in Naliya: the pastoralists and farmers of Abdasa will decide, day to day, whether a bustard nest survives.
Kutch’s only chick in a decade
With no male around, the three females lay infertile eggs. In March the forest department and WII swapped one of those eggs for a viable egg from the breeding programme in Rajasthan. The egg made a 770 km road trip in a portable incubator and hatched on 26 March, Gujarat’s first bustard chick in about ten years, Mongabay India reported. That chick disappeared within weeks, and officials suspected a jackal or fox took it, according to ThePrint.
The ministry now says a chick from a second egg swap has lived more than three months in the wild. The new fencing targets that exact risk. A bustard nests on bare ground and raises a single chick, so one fox can erase a female’s breeding season.
What it means for Kutch residents
- Herders around Naliya: the reports on the plan’s release do not spell out what “grazing management” will mean on the ground, such as closed seasons or fenced-off commons. Herders and farmers in Lala-Rawa will want those details before anything else.
- Power and wind projects: overhead lines kill an estimated 18 bustards a year across India, Mongabay and ThePrint both report. Wind turbines and transmission lines already stand across the Abdasa grasslands, ThePrint’s reporting shows, and the Supreme Court has been hearing the power-line question since 2021, when it first ordered lines in bustard habitat moved underground. A plan that promises to cut infrastructure threats will run straight into that dispute.
- The soft release centre: captive-bred birds from Rajasthan are the only plausible source of males for Kutch. The centre at Naliya lets them adjust to local conditions before release, which makes it the piece of the plan that can change the three-female arithmetic.
What to watch
Three markers will show whether the 30-bird target means anything. First, the date the first captive-bred birds move from Rajasthan to Naliya. Second, whether the forest department publishes the grazing rules for Lala-Rawa and consults the villages that use those commons. Third, how the plan’s promise on infrastructure lines up with the power lines and turbines already standing around the grassland. Until males arrive, Kutch’s bustards depend on egg swaps and fences.
Sources: DeshGujarat, IANS via Punjab Kesari, ThePrint, Mongabay India
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.