Egged on: Hatching a plan to save the great Indian bustard

Two years on, there are 16 chicks at the GIB captive-breeding centre at Ramdevra, in the Desert National Park of Rajasthan. The youngest is three months old; the eldest will be three in October.

As it turned out, Jhala and Dutta did find eggs in the wild (their first worry), found ways to hatch them, achieved an 85% success rate, and have raised those nestlings into sub-adulthood.

This population, called a founding population, will never be released into the sprawling desert-grassland landscapes of their parents. But the chicks they breed could be released into the wild. That’s what makes collecting the eggs a worthy risk, in a species so reduced that there are only about 150 left in the wild.

On average, a GIB lives an estimated 12 to 15 years in the wild. Males reach sexual maturity around the age of 4 or 5; females about a year earlier. The centre needs a founding population of about 35 birds to avoid inbreeding. Once they have that, the attempts to breed them will begin.

But breeding in bustards can only occur under very specific and rather peculiar conditions, and achieving that in captivity, a feat with any species, will be a particularly tricky feat with this one. In all, it could take 15 years from gathering the first eggs to having those chicks’ own chicks ready for the wild.

FEATHERING THE NEST

The captive-breeding programme at Ramdevra is a joint initiative of WII, the Rajasthan forest department and union environment ministry, with technical support from Abu Dhabi’s International Fund for Houbara Conservation (IFHC).

“Through this programme, we hope to secure a population against the extinction of a species, and eventually supplement wild populations,” says SP Yadav, additional director general for wildlife with the union environment ministry. “The challenges that remain include securing safe habitats to reintroduce viable populations of the GIB into, and producing a sufficient number of GIBs at the conservation breeding centre and training them to live and survive in the wild.”

The IFHC, in collaboration with the wildlife consultancy Reneco, has been running a houbara bustard breeding programme since 1986, with great success. This bustard species, native to Africa, West Asia and some other parts of Asia (it can be seen in the Rann, for instance, in winters), is widely hunted in West Asia, and periodically has its numbers replenished from within the captive-bred population.

The IHFC assisted in training WII researchers and veterinarians in husbandry techniques, starting with the collection and incubation of eggs. Their scientists also spent a year in India, helping tackle teething problems such as how to deal with nutritional deficiencies and injuries such as bone fractures.

A LONG-DISTANCE AFFAIR

Securing a GIB egg is particularly hard because “bustards are extremely shy and skittish,” says Jhala. “The smallest sign of disturbance and a female bird won’t return to her nest.”

So, in the vast, flat landscape of the Thar Desert, researchers must stay about 2 km away, and try and tell through powerful spotting scopes if a female is nesting.

“This requires intense field efforts. Our team of six to eight wildlife researchers and local assistants observe the birds in harsh desert weather for about four months, from June to September every year,” says Dutta, who is part of this team.

“Once we are sure of a nest and its location, we make a mental image of the spot using natural landmarks such as trees, bushes and the lay of land. A small team then approaches, guided by these landmarks — after the bird has gone foraging, and only if we intend to collect the egg, because female bustards can abandon their eggs if disturbed too often.”

What comes next is a process called candling (where a beam of light is passed through the egg, to determine its stage of development); the egg is then placed in an incubator, where temperature and humidity are controlled.

“It is their progeny who won’t ever come into contact with humans, and who will be rewilded,” Jhala says.

A WING AND A PRAYER

Not everyone has been on board with the idea of a captive-breeding programme for the GIB. “The IUCN bustard specialist Nigel Collar’s objection was that if we were to take bird eggs from the wild, it would jeopardise the survival of the wild birds and it would take the focus off conserving these birds in the wild,” Jhala says. “And rightly so. But this was back in 2011, when he thought the overhead power lines would go underground in a year or two.”

Conservationists are still fighting to get power lines in the Thar Desert moved underground and WII estimates that about 16 GIBs die each year, as a result of collisions with these power lines.

“This is a loss that this slow breeding species cannot compensate for,” says Jhala. “If we had not started with the captive breeding, we would not have had any insurance against total annihilation.”