IUCN bats for protection of great Indian bustard

In a significant development towards protection and conservation of the great Indian bustard, the World Conservation Congress (WCC) hosted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), voted in favour of a motion for the species on the verge of extinction.

At the WCC held in Marseille, France, from 3-11 September 2021, the Members Assembly voted in favour of the motion titled Preventing the extinction of the Great Indian Bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps) in India.

The Corbett Foundation, a Member of the IUCN and one of the leading conservation organisations in India, took the lead in proposing this motion in May 2019 and received support from the following national organisations: Aaranyak, Bombay Natural History Society, Gujarat Ecology Society, Wildlife Conservation Trust, Wildlife Protection Society of India and Wildlife Trust of India, and international organisations such as BirdLife International (UK) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (UK).

Read | Demise of Great Indian Bustards

This motion went for online voting in 2020, and thus it became a Resolution in September 2021 at the WCC, which was initially scheduled to be held in June 2020 but was postponed thrice due to the pandemic.

“The Resolution preventing the extinction of the Great Indian Bustard in India would help to further intensify and strengthen the efforts to conserve and protect the last surviving population of these majestic birds,” said Kedar Gore, Director, The Corbett Foundation, who is also a Member, IUCN SSC Bustard Specialist Group.

The motions are the mechanism by which Members of IUCN influence and guide the policy of conservation programmes.

Listed as “critically endangered”, less than 150 great Indian bustards remain in the wild today, mainly in India - Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh - while a few are sporadically reported in the Cholistan parts of Pakistan adjoining the states of Rajasthan and Gujarat.

In the last couple of decades, the steep decline in the population of great Indian bustard in the last few decades is primarily due to their collision with the overhead power lines. It is important to note that in addition to the existing power lines, renewable energy projects have also come up at large-scale around the Thar Desert (Rajasthan), Kutch (Gujarat) and in other range states of the species such as Maharashtra.

This situation results in a rapid increase of overhead power line networks in and around the bustard habitat. Documented deaths of tagged great Indian bustard in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra have proven beyond doubt the potential threat these overhead power lines pose to these bustards and many other species of birds.

In addition to the collision with power lines, habitat loss, hunting, uncontrolled livestock grazing, predation by feral dogs, changing crop pattern, indiscriminate use of pesticides, and conversion of grasslands and semi-arid regions – that are unfortunately categorised as ‘wastelands’ – for developmental projects or agriculture encroachment, have been other reasons for the decline in bustard numbers.

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