Bustard chick hatched from eggs of artificially reared couple in Jaisalmer

In a first, a captive hatched and bred Great Indian Bustards (GIB) has given birth to a chick in Jaisalmer’s GIB breeding centre.

Two artificially hatched GIBs had mated in February and the female delivered an egg on March 6. On Saturday, the egg got hatched with a healthy chick. “This is for the first- time reproduction has happened and it is an important story to improve the GIB population,” an official said.

“This shows that our effort to save the GIBs is moving in the right direction,” said a Wildlife Institute of India scientist, working on the GIBs.

“Our aim is to do artificial insemination for GIBs to build their gene pool and improve their numbers in the wild,” he said.

Also Read: NMMC erects five watch towers for flamingos views

Explaining the process, an official said that the breeding centre had collected 30 eggs from the wild of which six were damaged. 24 chicks were successfully hatched from the eggs and two of them died. “As of now, we have 22 artificially hatched GIBs at the Jaisalmer breeding centre,” the official said.

Ashish Vyas, divisional forest officer and in-charge of Desert National Park (DNP) said on March 6, one artificially reared couple gave an egg and after the artificial incubation process on Saturday a chick has been successfully hatched.

Dr Sarwar Singh Rathore, a veterinary scientist at the GIB Conservation Breeding project at Sam in Jaisalmer, said the chick is healthy and the hatching took place after 21 days of incubation.

Dr Rathore said during the artificial process, the egg is placed in an incubator to keep it warm and under the right humidity levels. “Many times, the GIBs eggs in wild are eaten by predators and the initiative of artificial hatching was to get maximum chicks from the eggs, which are a few in a year,” he said.

Vyas said that the chicks from captive bustards would help the centre to have a population of GIBs for introduction to its natural habitat. However, he added that the founder generation of GIBs will be used for breeding and giving birth to GIBs for introduction into a natural habitat. “The first generation of GIBs are too attached to humans and have been manually fed. They may not have the ability to find food for themselves in wild,” said the first official quoted above.

Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav congratulated the forest and WII officials. “Happy to share that Project Great Indian Bustard has crossed another milestone in Jaisalmer. GIB, a highly endangered bird, also known as Son Chairaiya, has been successfully hatched from artificially reared birds in captivity. Kudos to forest officials and WII for the feat,” he wrote on Twitter.

According to the Wildlife Institute, with a decline of 75% in 30 years, the GIB number has gone down to less than 150 in India with close to 90 of them found in two protected areas– Desert National Park and Ramdevra Army Protected area. The power lines and windmills in the Thar desert in Rajasthan and Kutch in Gujarat have contributed to their declines, experts say.

Also Read: Rail tracks may be shifted out of tiger reserve to protect wildlife in Palamu

The GIB, a state bird of Rajasthan and also known as Godawan, is listed as critically endangered in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) list and is granted the highest level of protection under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.

Radheshyam Pemani, a local environmentalist said, that the centre should now focus on new captive breeding initiatives such as artificial insemination and double clutching from almost every female.

Government should take measures to protect the GIBs including removing overhead power cables and putting them underground, he said.

“We lost nine Godawan in the past four years due to power lines and their number is precariously low. If the effort is not taken, we may lose all Godawans in the wild,” he added.