On 14 June 2026, Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav announced that Project GIB had added three more chicks to its conservation-breeding programme, taking the captive stock to 94 birds. In the fourth year of captive breeding, 26 chicks have hatched so far — 18 through artificial insemination, four through natural breeding and four from wild-collected eggs. Separately, three chicks have hatched in the wild in Rajasthan through a "jumpstart" intervention to improve genetic diversity. For CDS aspirants, the Great Indian Bustard (GIB) is one of the most testable species in environment and ecology — it sits at the intersection of endangered species, protected areas, and a famous Supreme Court case.
Meet the Bird
The Great Indian Bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps) is one of the heaviest flying birds in the world — a tall, ground-dwelling bird of dry grasslands and scrub. Key exam facts:
- IUCN status: Critically Endangered — the highest threat category before extinct-in-the-wild. Wild numbers have crashed to roughly the low hundreds, mostly in Rajasthan.
- It is the State Bird of Rajasthan, and was once a contender to be India's national bird.
- It is listed in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 (highest protection) and in Appendix I of CITES and CMS (the Convention on Migratory Species).
- Its stronghold is the Desert National Park near Jaisalmer in the Thar Desert, with small populations in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
Why It's Dying — and the Power-Line Problem
The single biggest threat is collision with overhead power lines cutting through its desert habitat. The GIB has poor frontal vision and is heavy and slow to manoeuvre, so it doesn't spot wires in time. This produced a landmark case: in 2021, the Supreme Court (in M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India) ordered power lines in GIB habitat to go underground where feasible and mandated bird diverters elsewhere — a much-cited example of balancing renewable energy (solar/wind in the Thar) against biodiversity. Other threats include habitat loss to farming, free-ranging dogs, and very slow breeding (a female typically lays just one egg a year).
How "Conservation Breeding" Works
Because wild recovery alone is too slow, the response is conservation (captive) breeding — collecting eggs from the wild, hatching and rearing chicks in protected centres, and building a genetically healthy captive population to eventually re-introduce birds into the wild. The June 2026 figures show the toolkit in action:
- Artificial insemination (AI) — 18 of the 26 chicks this season — lets a small founder population reproduce without natural pairing constraints and boosts genetic diversity.
- "Jumpstart" intervention — replacing wild eggs taken for the captive programme so wild birds re-lay, and hatching extra chicks in the wild, improving founder genetic diversity while reducing predation risk.
The breeding effort runs at centres in Rajasthan (notably around Sam/Sudasari in Jaisalmer and Ramdevra), led by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) with the Rajasthan Forest Department and the Environment Ministry. This is the practical face of India's in-situ vs ex-situ conservation debate — a theme worth revising alongside your broader environment and biodiversity notes.
The Bigger Picture: India's Species-Recovery Toolkit
GIB joins a set of flagship recovery programmes CDS examiners group together — Project Tiger (1973), Project Elephant (1992), Project Lion, Project Dolphin, and the species-recovery programme under the centrally sponsored scheme Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats. Knowing GIB as the "critically endangered grassland bird with the power-line problem" makes it instantly recognisable in a question. Conservation governance also connects to the bodies and laws covered in your polity notes on statutory and constitutional institutions.
The Renewable-Energy Paradox
The GIB story carries a counter-intuitive twist examiners love: the very solar and wind farms that fight climate change are killing a critically endangered bird. The Thar Desert is one of India's best zones for renewables, so it is criss-crossed with high-tension transmission lines. In M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India, the Supreme Court initially ordered lines underground, then in 2024 modified its stance — recognising India's climate commitments and the impracticality of burying high-voltage lines — and set up an expert committee to balance conservation with the right to be free from climate change, which the Court linked to Articles 14 and 21. The practical mitigation now pushed is bird diverters (reflective discs that make wires visible) plus undergrounding only where feasible. This "green vs green" dilemma — clean energy versus biodiversity — is a ready-made answer for an environment-ethics question.
Don't Confuse the Bustards
India has three bustard species, and mixing them up is a classic trap:
- Great Indian Bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps) — Critically Endangered; State Bird of Rajasthan; Desert National Park.
- Lesser Florican (Sypheotides indicus) — the smallest, Critically Endangered, famous for the male's leaping breeding display in the monsoon grasslands of Gujarat/Rajasthan/MP.
- Bengal Florican (Houbaropsis bengalensis) — Critically Endangered, found in the Terai grasslands (and the Brahmaputra floodplains of Assam).
All three are grassland-dependent, which is why conservationists argue grasslands are India's most neglected and threatened ecosystem — too often dismissed as "wasteland."
The Habitat and the Institutions
The Desert National Park spans roughly 3,162 sq km across Jaisalmer and Barmer districts of Rajasthan — a landscape of shifting dunes and sewan grassland. The captive-breeding effort, launched in the species' name as a joint programme of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the Rajasthan Forest Department, runs hatching-and-rearing centres at Sam/Sudasari and Ramdevra. Conservation is reinforced by India's Wildlife Action Plan and the species-specific recovery programme under the centrally sponsored Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats, the same architecture that funds Project Tiger, Elephant, Dolphin and the cheetah re-introduction.
Biology Is Why It's So Hard to Save
Understanding why the GIB is slipping away makes the conservation numbers meaningful. It is a long-lived but extremely slow breeder: a female usually lays just one egg a year, on the bare ground, where it is exposed to predators, cattle trampling and stray dogs. The chicks mature slowly and the species needs vast, undisturbed grassland to forage — it is an omnivore, eating insects, seeds, small reptiles and crops. That combination — low reproductive rate plus a habitat that is shrinking and fragmenting — means that even a few extra deaths a year (say, from a power line) can tip the wild population toward collapse, which is exactly why captive breeding and artificial insemination, which maximise output from each surviving founder, became the only realistic lifeline. The conservation-breeding programme began in 2019 (the "fourth year" referenced in 2026), and the steady climb to 94 captive birds is meaningful precisely because nature itself produces so few.
🎯 Practice MCQs
Q1. The Great Indian Bustard is the State Bird of which state? (a) Gujarat (b) Rajasthan (c) Madhya Pradesh (d) Maharashtra → (b).
Q2. What is the IUCN Red List status of the Great Indian Bustard? (a) Vulnerable (b) Endangered (c) Critically Endangered (d) Near Threatened → (c).
Q3. The single largest cause of unnatural GIB deaths in the wild is: (a) Poaching for meat (b) Collision with overhead power lines (c) Oil spills (d) Climate-driven migration → (b).
Q4. The GIB's main stronghold, the Desert National Park, is located near which city? (a) Bikaner (b) Jodhpur (c) Jaisalmer (d) Barmer → (c) — in the Thar Desert.
Q5. In the 2026 update, most of the 26 chicks hatched this season were produced through: (a) Natural breeding (b) Artificial insemination (c) Cloning (d) Egg imports → (b) — 18 of 26 via artificial insemination.
Q6. Which of the following is not one of India's three bustard species? (a) Great Indian Bustard (b) Lesser Florican (c) Bengal Florican (d) Sarus Crane → (d) — the Sarus is the world's tallest flying bird, but a crane, not a bustard.
Q7. In the GIB power-line case (M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India, 2024), the Supreme Court linked freedom from the adverse effects of climate change to which Articles? (a) Articles 14 and 21 (b) Articles 19 and 25 (c) Articles 32 and 226 (d) Articles 48A and 51A only → (a).
📋 How this gets asked (PYQ pattern)
CDS/OTA environment questions reliably test the IUCN status of flagship species, state birds/animals, protected areas and their states (Desert National Park → Rajasthan), and Wildlife Protection Act schedules. The fresh, this-cycle hooks: the 94-bird captive stock, conservation breeding via artificial insemination, and the power-line / Supreme Court (underground cabling) angle. Expect assertion–reason items pairing "renewable energy in the Thar" with "GIB conservation."
Environment and ecology are scoring lanes for CDS/OTA. Keep up at CDS/OTA Current Affairs and build your General Knowledge with Cavalier's upcoming CDS courses.
✍️ Written by Aditya Tiwari — CDS/OTA General Studies and environment faculty at The Cavalier. Reviewed by the Cavalier Faculty Desk. The Cavalier has trained NDA/CDS/SSB aspirants since 2001 (Facebook · YouTube).
Source: Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change PIB release, 14 June 2026 (PRID 2272725). GIB status, habitat and the M.K. Ranjitsinh judgment cross-verified against IUCN, WII and Rajasthan Forest Department references.