Today, fewer than 150 remain in the wild, confined largely to pockets of Rajasthan’s Jaisalmer and Kutch in Gujarat. Not very long ago, the Great Indian Bustard (GIB) ranged across a vast swathe of India, from Punjab in the north to Tamil Nadu in the south.
The information gathered from the first release will be important in determining how future captive-bred GIBs should be trained and released. “Degradation of grasslands along with hunting contributed in a major way in decline of the GIB population. But releasing a bird is one thing. Making it survive in the wild is another. The chick has survived beyond the critical first three months in the wild, a landmark for restarting breeding in Gujarat’s isolated population.
Their habitats have shrunk to less than 10% as compared to 1960s. The birds underwent extensive rewilding training at a specially designed facility costing ₹ 9.25 crore at the GIB Conservation Breeding Centre at Ramdevra. Already, a first chick has hatched in March 2026 after a fertile egg was moved about 770 km from Rajasthan.
Because it provides conservation scientists with an additional tool for breeding birds and managing genetic diversity in a species whose wild population has fallen to critically low levels, he added that use of artificial insemination is considered an important development.
In the last two decades, the high voltage lines connecting wind mills and solar farms to the grid in western Rajasthan and Gujarat overlap with Bustard traditional homes, and is a reason for death of large number of bustards,” said MK Ranjitsinh, former Union environment secretary. “With this, we have entered a new era of GIB conservation,” said Ashok Singh, assistant conservator of forest at Jaisalmer. Inside the tunnel, captive-bred birds are exposed to natural sunlight, temperature variations and airflow and were made to hunt the prey — insects and other natural foods — and find water, Singh said. It will also help scientists assess whether birds raised in captivity are capable of establishing themselves in the wild without prolonged human assistance, said WII official Mahesh Gurjar. If the experiment works, the officials said the next destination could be Kutch .
