IWN Report — Tuesday, 15 September 2026
Union Minister Bhupender Yadav travelled to Kachchh, Gujarat this week to launch a fresh rescue effort for one of India’s rarest birds. He released a Gujarat-specific action plan for the Great Indian Bustard and opened a soft release centre for captive-bred birds at Naliya, the heart of the state’s last bustard stronghold.
The bird is listed as Critically Endangered, and fewer than 150 are thought to survive in the wild, most of them in Rajasthan. Gujarat’s own population has shrunk to just three wild females in Kachchh, with no males recorded there, leaving no way to produce a fertile egg without help.
That help has come through what officials call the jump-start approach. Infertile eggs laid by wild females are swapped for viable eggs from the captive breeding programme, then left for the female to incubate and raise as her own chick. According to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, a chick from the second such swap in Kachchh has now survived beyond its first three months in the wild, a milestone officials described as significant for the species’ recovery in Gujarat.
Ground Work
Officials briefed the minister on work already under way around Naliya. About 11 square kilometres of grassland have been cleared of the invasive shrub Prosopis juliflora, and 30 kilometres of predator-proof fencing now ring a 15 square kilometre enclosure. The newly opened soft release centre will house captive-bred birds before their eventual release into the wild.
The new Gujarat Action Plan for GIB Conservation, prepared by the Wildlife Institute of India with the Gujarat Forest Department, sets a target of a minimum viable population of more than 30 birds across 200 to 500 square kilometres of secure, contiguous habitat. Its immediate focus is the roughly 200 square kilometre Lala-Rawa landscape, where the plan calls for habitat restoration, grazing management, predator control and steps to reduce infrastructure-related threats.
Local Backing
During the visit, Yadav met representatives of the Jat Sumra and Darbar communities at a Khatala Sabha in Naliya to build local support for the conservation effort, since pastoralist and farming families share the same grasslands the bustards depend on. He also flagged off 33 new patrolling and rescue vehicles for the Kachchh Forest Circle, for use in patrol, monitoring and rapid-response work across its forest divisions.
The Kachchh visit was part of a wider review of flagship conservation programmes that Yadav chaired in Bhuj, which also covered grassland restoration and Project Cheetah. He argued that protecting the bustard cannot be treated as a single-species exercise, since the same grasslands also support the lesser florican, chinkara, desert cats, raptors and vultures. He later visited a plantation at Sayara, where he inaugurated the Sayara Van Kavach initiative and an associated bee-keeping unit, and witnessed the exchange of a memorandum of understanding with the Deendayal Port Authority for further plantation work.
Project GIB, the captive breeding programme behind the jump-start eggs, was launched in 2016 and runs breeding centres at Sam and Ramdevra in Rajasthan. Its captive population has grown to 94 birds, according to the Press Information Bureau, after three chicks hatched earlier this year.
Sources: ANI, reporting a Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change statement · IANS, via Punjab Kesari · Press Information Bureau