NEW DELHI, October 3 — The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) on Saturday officially notified the comprehensive recommendations of the Supreme Court-mandated conservation task force for the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps), allocating ₹560 crore to scale captive breeding and habitat protection across the Thar Desert.
According to the ecological audit compiled in collaboration with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), the wild population of the heavy-flighted grassland bird remains critically compressed below 150 individuals globally, with over 90 percent restricted to the fragmented agropastoral landscape of Desert National Park (DNP) in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. The notified action plan mandates installing dynamic bird flight diverters on overhead power transmission lines intersecting priority bustard corridors and undergrounding high-voltage grid lines in core foraging habitats.
WII field biologists confirmed the deployment of lightweight solar-powered GPS-satellite transmitters on twelve additional captive-reared and wild sub-adults across the Ramdevra and Sam conservation breeding centers. The telemetry array will deliver real-time spatial positioning data to preempt collisions with wind turbines and high-tension grid wires.
The conservation status of the Great Indian Bustard (Rajasthan's State Bird, IUCN Critically Endangered, CITES Appendix I, and Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act 1972), the landmark Supreme Court ruling in M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India (2024 recognising a constitutional right to be free from adverse impacts of climate change under Articles 14 and 21), and semiarid grassland conservation are core topics across UPSC Civil Services (GS-III: Ecology & Biodiversity) and State Forest Service exams.