Desert National Park
A Indian bustard chick was recently conceived through artificial insemination in Rajasthan, India
Last month brought good news for the great Indian bustard, a critically endangered bird found primarily in India.
Wildlife officials in the western state of Rajasthan have successfully hatched a chick through artificial insemination.
A solitary adult male at one of two breeding centers in Jaisalmer city was trained to produce sperm without mating, which was then used to fertilize an adult female at the second center about 200 km away (124 miles).
Officials said the development was important because it opened up the possibility of establishing a sperm bank.
Over the years, habitat loss, poaching and collisions with overhead power lines have affected great Indian bustards. Their numbers have fallen from more than 1,000 in the 1960s to around 150 today.
Most of them are in Jaisalmer and so conservation activists say the birds' habitat in the city should be protected. But these lands also provide prime terrain for renewable energy companies, presenting authorities with a unique conservation challenge.
Radheshyam Pemani Bishnoi
The Great Indian Bustard is the state bird of Rajasthan
The great Indian bustard may not be as well known as the peacock (India's national bird), but it is just as impressive, says Sumit Dookia, a conservation ecologist who has studied the bird for nearly of a decade. This massive bird, which weighs between 15 and 18 kg, is one of the largest flying birds in India.
It was once very prevalent in the country and was present in at least 11 states, but today its population is confined to Rajasthan, while a handful can be spotted in the southern state of Karnataka and the western state of Gujarat.
This shy bird plays an important role in the food chain, feeding on rodents, snakes and other parasites. It is also the state bird of Rajasthan, where it is called “Godawan” by the locals.
But some of the bird's unique evolutionary traits conflict with human interventions, making it vulnerable to extinction.
For one thing, the great Indian bustard has good peripheral vision but poor frontal vision, making it difficult to detect power lines until it flies too close to them. Their large size makes it difficult to quickly change flight paths and they eventually collide with the cables and die.
“Their vision could have developed this way because the bird spends a lot of time on land,” explains Mr. Dokia. It also lays its eggs on the ground, without a nest or other form of protection other than the watchful eye of the mother, which may have allowed it to develop good lateral vision, he adds.
The Great Indian Bustard also has unique breeding habits. The bird lays only one egg at a time and spends the next two years caring for its offspring.
“As it reaches maturity at around four years old and lives between 12 and 15 years, it lays around four to five eggs in its lifetime and many of these eggs are destroyed by predators,” Mr Dokia said.
Desert National Park
The eggs of the Great Indian Bustard are as big as three or four chicken eggs.
Environmentalists say that in recent years, the great Indian bustard's habitat in Jaisalmer has been invaded by solar and wind energy farms, leading to an increase in plane crashes.
“Increased human presence has also created more dirt, attracting stray dogs who kill the birds or destroy their eggs,” says Dookia.
To increase the bird population, the Rajasthan government collaborated with the federal government and the Wildlife Institute of India to launch a conservation breeding center in Sam town in 2018. Another breeding center was established in Ramdevra village in 2022, says Ashish Vyas, a senior forest official from Jaisalmer.
First, researchers collected eggs found in the wild and hatched them in incubation centers. “Currently, there are 45 birds in the two centers, 14 of which are captive-bred chicks (including the one born by artificial insemination),” he adds.
The plan is to further increase the bird population and then release them into the wild. But environmental advocates say that's easier said than done.
Desert National Park
Great Indian Bustards with their human masters at a breeding center in Jaisalmer
Indeed, birds born in these breeding centers imprinted on human researchers (in other words, they formed close bonds with their human caretakers) and lost approximately 60 to 70% of their ability to survive in nature, explains Mr. Dookie. .
“The human footprint is necessary to feed and handle the birds, but it also causes them to lose their natural instincts. It will be extremely difficult to return them to the wild, especially if there is no longer any habitat in which the birds could be released,” he adds.
Habitat loss has also led to another problem: Researchers have noticed that birds, which used to migrate between states, have almost completely stopped doing so. Even in Jaisalmer, where the birds are found in two pockets – Pokhran in the eastern part of the city and Desert National Park in the west – there is hardly any cross-migration, says Mr Dokia.
It's likely that birds stopped migrating long distances in response to plane crashes, he adds. This increases the risk of inbreeding, which could lead to birth defects.
“Thus, the only solution to conserve the great Indian bustard is to preserve its natural habitat,” he believes.
But a Supreme Court ruling in April left environmental advocates uneasy.
The court set aside an earlier interim order, which had directed Rajasthan and Gujarat to prioritize moving power cables underground in the habitats of great Indian bustards. The order caused a stir among renewable energy companies, who said it would cost them billions of rupees and virtually kill their business.
Radheshyam Pemani Bishnoi
Birds often collide with overhead power lines and die
In its latest judgment, the court observed that citizens have the right to be safe from the adverse effects of climate change and that moving large sections of electrical cables underground may not be feasible for companies from a monetary and technical point of view.
He also ordered the creation of a committee to examine the feasibility of moving power lines and the effectiveness of bird deflectors – devices with reflectors attached to power cables to alert birds to their presence.
While businesses welcomed the top court's ruling, environmental advocates and some legal experts say it is problematic because it pits one good cause against another.
“The judgment highlights a flawed understanding of the interaction between climate change, biodiversity and development issues,” wrote environmentalist Debadityo Sinha in an op-ed.
He noted that many highly populated cities in India have underground power lines and that other states have taken similar steps to protect other bird species in the past. He also pointed out that while moving electrical cables underground is expensive, it likely represents only a fraction of a company's total revenue.
Mr Dookie says one of the reasons why renewable energy companies are flocking to Rajasthan is the low cost of land.
“There also isn't a lot of research on the long-term impact of these renewable energy farms on the state's climate and ecology,” he says.
“It is therefore not only the future of the bird that is at stake, it is also that of man.”
Follow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
