Time is running out for the great Indian bustard. In the wild, fewer than 150 of these critically endangered ostrich-like birds survive, mostly in India’s Rajasthan state. But a captive-breeding program, making a last-ditch attempt at preventing complete extinction of the species, is seeing signs of hope: it recently welcomed four great Indian bustard chicks, taking the total number of captive-raised birds to more than 50.
“It has been an extremely uphill task,” said Sutirtha Dutta, senior scientist with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the Bustard Recovery Program. “At least now the species is not going to go extinct entirely.”
Since 2019, the Bustard Recovery Program, a partnership between WII, the Rajasthan Forest Department and India’s environment ministry, has collected 42 eggs from great Indian bustards (Ardeotis nigriceps) in the wild, and hatched them in incubators at their captive-breeding centers. “We currently have 30 birds in captivity that are from these wild-laid eggs,” Dutta said. He added these first-generation captive-raised birds are the founder birds, or the F0 generation.
Some of the founder birds have bred in captivity since March 2023 and laid eggs, which were also hatched in incubators. The 20 additional chicks born this way, seven in 2025 so far, are the F1 generation, Dutta said. There are now more than 50 captive-raised birds at the centers.
Sumit Dookia, a wildlife biologist at Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University who’s been working to protect the species’ habitat but isn’t involved in the captive-breeding program, told Mongabay by email this development is “good success.”
“With sincere efforts and a dedicated trained team, they are able to have about 33% of the global population in captivity, which will certainly arrest the speculation of extinction in near future,” he said.
Dutta told Mongabay by phone that his team intends to start releasing captive-raised chicks to the wild in Rajasthan from 2026, but the rewilding protocol is still being developed.
Successful rewilding, however, will depend on whether there’s sufficient suitable habitat for the birds to survive in. In Rajasthan, where most wild bustards are found, much of the bird’s habitat has been replaced by agricultural fields. The rapidly growing network of power lines and wind turbines across their habitats pose further threats to the birds.
Habitat restoration efforts have been slow, Dutta said, but the success of the captive-breeding program gives his team “hope and leverage” that restoration measures will be expedited, especially in Rajasthan.
Dookia said that while he’s optimistic, the bird’s habitat now faces greater threats than before. “There is no fully or completely safe area which [can] house a sizeable population of these captive bred GIBs in the wild,” he said. “One thing is clear that there is hardly any area left in the wild anywhere, in comparison to Jaisalmer [in Rajasthan], where the GIB can still fly with its full spread wings for longer distances.”
Banner image: Great Indian bustard chicks at Rajasthan’s captive-breeding centers, courtesy of the Bustard Recovery Program, WII.
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