- Nepal is debating a captive-breeding program for the Bengal florican, a critically endangered bird, but experts say it shouldn’t be an alternative to stronger habitat protection.
- Fewer than 1,000 birds remain worldwide, with just a few dozen in Nepal, where farming, invasive plants, pesticides and disturbance are driving the decline.
- Cambodia has hatched floricans in captivity, and Nepal has similar experience with vultures, but experts warn that floricans are elusive, sensitive to stress, and difficult to breed.
- Conservationists stress the need for better grassland management, protection of nonbreeding habitats, and community support programs to prevent grassland conversion for agriculture.
KATHMANDU — Debate is growing in Nepal over moves to start breeding the Bengal florican, a critically endangered bird, in captivity. A 2024 government plan that proposes captive breeding in zoos and aviaries has been held up as key to boosting the bird’s population in the wild, but conservationists say long-term protection of the species’ nesting sites and grassland habitat is crucial.
“If the population trend of the Bengal florican continues, we might lose them completely in the next few years,” Rajendra Suwal, a veteran ornithologist, told a recent gathering of researchers organized by the Nepalese Ornithological Union in Kathmandu. “Captive breeding could be one of the short-term measures to boost their population.”
The Bengal florican (Houbaropsis bengalensis), also known as the Bengal bustard, is best known for the male’s signature mating display of flapping its wings and throwing itself into the air as though jumping on a trampoline. According to estimates by the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, the Bengal florican’s population may have declined rapidly over the last three decades. The IUCN assessment cites “the widespread and on-going modification of its grassland habitat” for farmland as a key driver of the bird’s decline.
The Nepali floricans are part of a wider subpopulation that extends into northern India and, historically, into Bangladesh — although that latter group is now thought to have gone extinct. A second subpopulation exists in Cambodia and possibly Vietnam, putting the species’ global population at an estimated fewer than 1,000 mature individuals.
Captive breeding is already being conducted, with some success, for the subpopulation at Cambodia’s Tonle Sap, a seasonally flooded lake.
As part of an ex-situ initiative launched in 2019 by the nonprofit Angkor Centre for Conservation of Biodiversity, 15 Bengal floricans are reported to have hatched at the center’s assurance colony. According to the IUCN, when eggs are spotted in the Tonle Sap grasslands, they’re carefully collected by caregivers in collaboration with members of the local community, and brought to the center for artificial incubation. After the eggs hatch, the chicks are hand-reared by experienced caretakers, establishing an assurance colony for the species, with the ultimate goal of reintroducing them back into the wild.
“If possible, Nepal should also look into ex-situ conservation efforts such as captive breeding,” Ankit Bilash Joshi, conservation manager at the NGO Bird Conservation Nepal (BCN), who visited the ACCB in Cambodia earlier this year, told Mongabay. “But if we are to adopt the Cambodian model, we need to be ready to invest adequate resources.”
Most of the Bengal floricans in Nepal are found in and around Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve in the country’s east, according to a 2023 survey, near the border with India. That survey recorded 24 floricans there, compared to just two in Chitwan National Park and five in Shuklaphanta National Park farther west. Earlier studies had shown up to 47 individuals in Koshi, 17 in Shuklaphanta, 11 in Chitwan, and nine in Bardiya National Park.
In Nepal, the species’ decline has mainly been attributed to loss and degradation of grassland habitat, encroachment by woody plants, invasive species, and ill-timed burning. These pressures are compounded by intensive farming and pesticide use that reduce the bird’s insect prey, along with hunting, poaching and human disturbance during the breeding season.
The most recent experiment at captive breeding of birds in Nepal was with white-rumped vultures (Gyps bengalensis) and slender-billed vultures (Gyps tenuirostris), both also critically endangered. Under the captive-breeding program that ran from 2008-2022, Chitwan National Park raised 18 vulture chicks and released them into the wild to supplement the wild population.
Although a concrete proposal on how to carry out a similar program for Bengal floricans hasn’t been prepared, it could look something like the vulture experiment, said Bed Kumar Dhakal, spokesperson for the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation. Even the same facility used to raise vulture chicks could be used for Bengal floricans, he told Mongabay.
But other experts note that vultures are generalist species: they don’t require specific habitat types in which to thrive, whereas Bengal floricans need a kind of grassland that sits in a “Goldilocks” zone where the grass is neither too tall nor too short. There would also need to be an absence of disturbances, so that the birds can hide and lay their eggs in the grass. Additionally, there’s the risk that birds could die in captivity due to stress, Joshi said.
Another challenge to adopting the Cambodian program is that locating wild bird nests to collect eggs for rearing has long proved immensely difficult.
“I have never encountered a Bengal florican nest, and long-term nature guides in the region report the same,” said Aditya Pal, a researcher who has extensively surveyed Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve. “Nests remain undetected even after years of dedicated effort.”
Pal and his team have, on a few occasions, suspected nesting activity based on repeated sightings of florican couples, but have never been able to confirm it with the discovery of an actual nest.
This low encounter rate could also suggest that the existing florican population is getting old and less able to reproduce, further increasing its survival risk, said ornithologist Hem Bahadur Katuwal at Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, China. This has implications for collection of eggs for captive rearing, which looks less possible in the context of Nepal.
Short of finding eggs to incubate, a captive-breeding program could also capture adult male and female birds for reproduction. But Pal said this could prove hazardous to the birds, which are highly elusive and sensitive to human disturbance.
“This could potentially cause stress, territory abandonment, or even mortality,” he added.
For decades, the birds remained elusive even during their nonbreeding season. Then, in 2018, after years of speculation about where they went during this half of the year, a satellite-tagging study found that Bengal floricans leave their protected, seasonally flooded breeding areas in favor of unprotected agricultural fields and other upland grasslands.
Although captive breeding could be a short-term booster measure, Suwal said it shouldn’t be considered an alternative to long-term interventions. The first among those interventions is to strictly follow grassland management schedules that don’t interfere with the bird’s nesting period in national parks. Park authorities cut or set fire to the grass in lowland regions just ahead of and after the monsoon. In the past, this coincided with the florican breeding season. However, following the introduction of new habitat management guidelines, burning is now usually carried out before the premonsoon breeding season begins. But this schedule isn’t always strictly adhered to on the ground.
The other long-term measure experts propose is to secure the species’ nonbreeding habitats: the agricultural fields. To that end, a Nepalese Ornithological Union team led by researcher Suraj Baral is piloting a program to introduce lemongrass cultivation to local farmers. The idea is to switch to this high-value crop that can also serve as a nonbreeding habitat for Bengal floricans, Baral said.
Such initiatives need to go hand in hand with awareness-raising programs aimed at local communities, he added.
It’s also possible that Nepal’s current population of Bengal floricans have been undercounted, said Hathan Chaudhary, president of the ornithological union. Population counts at present rely on spotting the males’ mating displays, but Chaudhary said researchers should also be exploring new potential habitats in search of undetected populations,
“The numbers indicate that their population is declining,” he said, “but maybe we are looking for them in the wrong places.”
Cover Image: Critically endangered Bengal Florican photographed in Nepal. Image courtesy of Aditya Pal.
Nepal launches new plan to boost critically endangered Bengal florican
Credits
