Saving the Great Indian Bustard By Dharmendra Khandal Jun 12 2013 Tags: Leisure Writing The heaviest of flying birds in the world, Great Indian Bustard (GIB) is today found only in six states of the country -- Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan. With all these states accounting for just about 200 birds, the GIB is clearly on the brink of extinction. The United Nation’s conservation body, IUCN, has kept this bird in a critically endangered category and experts say saving the GIB is already a lost battle. Of the 200 GIBs in India, 100 are in Rajasthan while the remaining number is shared between the other five states. With the Rajasthan government initiating a big conservation project last week, there seems to be some ray of hope for the bird. The state government has allocated Rs 12.9 crore for the project and submitted another Rs 60 crore project to the centre. The money will be used in the coming five years on conservation projects for the species. So where will the resources get used? Are such efforts enough for the recovery of the species? Actually, this is not the first conservation step for the species. The concept of Desert National Park (DNP) was formulated for the conservation of desert flora and fauna. GIB is an apex species of the desert ecosystem, mainly found in DNP areas only. DNP is a 3,162 sq km area situated in the Thar Desert that has 77 major villages and hundreds of small hamlets. Above 3 lakh people are surviving within the sanctuary area, their dayto day needs for resources like wood, grass, stones and sand itself, is a big completion with the GIB survival. The present allotment of money has to be understood. Is it to stop these age- old practices or to provide alternatives to the local communities to wean them off these practices? The ultimate key is in the hand of community in participating towards habitat conservation for the species. The Bombay Natural History Society director, Asad Rehmani says that we have to take community along the conservation and protection work. He is also says that areas like Sudasari which are enclosures for the species should be replicated in the area. However, besides Sudasari there are 27 other enclosures, none of which are as well maintained. Now, let us hope that funds from this new project will improve the situation. Earlier, the forest department would remove money from other projects such as plantation and desertification control work to restore bustard habitat that made the other projects suffer as well. So in addition, the was ironically ruining plantation projects in the desert which is not good for the bustard’s habitat. A captive breeding programme is very important for the bird, but this is not clear in the present Project Bustard. Wildlife expert Pramod Patil suggests that if the bird population plummets further, we will not have any option left but to recover them through such methods. Rajasthan is the only state that has a sizeable population on whom such experiments can be worked upon. However, we should look at the project initiation as a positive sign. Conservationists have been waiting for such a project for the last 30 years, and if conducted properly, will boost the bustard population tremendously. (The writer is a conservation biologist at Tiger Watch, Ranthambore) Source: mydigitalfc/leisure-writing/saving-great-indian-bustard-830
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 09:19:10 +0000
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