Bird Islands: Beyond Symbolic Conservation

07 Oct 2026

Tags: Environment   Conservation   Protection frameworks

Source: The Hindu

Context: Two male Great Indian Bustards (GIBs) were recently released into the wild at Desert National Park, Jaisalmer, highlighting India’s efforts to recover one of its most threatened bird species.

• The conservation programme now has 97 birds, with nine more awaiting release.
• Of these, 57 are captive-bred, producing 29 chicks this year and 24 in the previous year.
• With the wild population estimated at only around 120, these captive-breeding gains are significant but do not by themselves resolve the species’ habitat and survival challenges.

Great Indian Bustard: Conservation Journey

• The Great Indian Bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps), locally known as Godawan, is a large ground-dwelling bird associated with India's grassland and semi-arid landscapes.
• Ornithologist Salim Ali had advocated making it India’s national bird to strengthen its protection, but the Indian Board for Wildlife selected the peacock instead.
• Its population declined from around 1,260 in 1969 to about 600 by 2000, and subsequently to only 140–175 in Rajasthan during the 2010s.
• Hunting, including hunting by royalty, remained a major threat for decades, reportedly continuing into the late 1970s.

Habitat Transformation

• Rajasthan's grasslands were historically treated as “wastelands”, leading to their conversion for irrigation, agriculture and infrastructure.
• Expansion of irrigated and pesticide-intensive agriculture reduced suitable habitat and increased risks to the species.
• Roads and other infrastructure further fragmented the bird’s landscape.
• The GIB’s decline therefore reflects not only direct killing but also long-term habitat degradation and fragmentation.

Power Lines: A Major Modern Threat

• High-tension power lines pose a serious collision risk to the GIB.
• Being a large and heavy bird, it often flies at heights similar to overhead power lines and has relatively poor frontal vision.
• The Supreme Court in 2021 directed that low-voltage power lines in priority GIB habitats be placed underground.
• Renewable-energy companies raised concerns that extensive undergrounding could increase the cost and affect the economics of solar-power projects.
• The Court subsequently modified its approach, limiting undergrounding requirements to a subset of power lines falling within the bird's critical habitat.
• This illustrates the challenge of balancing species conservation with renewable-energy expansion and infrastructure development.

Beyond the Great Indian Bustard

• India’s conservation challenge extends beyond high-profile flagship species.
• Around 1,256 bird species, approximately 11.5% of the world's bird species, are classified as threatened.
• Skylark populations have reportedly declined by nearly 80%, while Indian roller populations have declined by around 30% over 12 years.
• Lesser-known species often receive considerably less conservation attention, funding and public visibility.

Limits of Species-Centric Conservation

• India's conservation policy can become overly focused on symbolic or charismatic species, such as tigers, cheetahs, lions and bustards.
• Examples include translocation of a tigress from Valmiki to Buxa, introduction of African cheetahs into enclosed facilities and continued confinement of Asiatic lions largely to the Gir–Saurashtra landscape.
• Expansion of lion populations into human settlements has generated human–wildlife conflict.
• In the Delhi Ridge, planting species such as peepal and banyan has also raised ecological concerns because these species may not correspond to the Ridge's naturally dry ecological conditions.

Conservation “Islands” and Human–Wildlife Conflict

• Conservation increasingly risks creating isolated protected “islands” surrounded by heavily modified human landscapes.
• Protected areas and species-specific reserves have important conservation benefits, but they cannot independently address landscape-level ecological pressures.
• Growing wildlife populations confined within limited spaces may spill over into surrounding villages and agricultural fields, increasing human–wildlife conflict.
• India's experience with elephants illustrates how habitat fragmentation and restricted movement corridors can intensify such conflicts.

Landscape-Level Conservation

• Landscape approach to conservation treats the entire ecological landscape—forests, grasslands, wetlands, agricultural areas, corridors and human settlements—as the unit of conservation rather than protecting individual species in isolation.
• It seeks to maintain habitat connectivity, ecological processes, wildlife corridors and coexistence between communities and wildlife.
• This approach is particularly relevant in India because wildlife habitats frequently overlap with agricultural and inhabited landscapes.
• Conservation should therefore combine protected areas with habitat restoration, ecological corridors, sustainable land use and community participation.
• The GIB illustrates this principle particularly well: captive breeding can increase numbers, but long-term recovery ultimately depends on securing and restoring its grassland landscape and flight-safe habitat.