Tribute to Great Indian Bustard!!!

The inevitable has happened. Man has hit the last nail in the coffin of yet another species. After enormous species of plants, animals, birds and insects, human greed has pushed Great Indian Bustard to the point of no return. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and BirdLife International has listed the bird as critically endangered. It will also feature in September 2011 issue of Red List, the book of critically endangered species.
The bird found in India and Pakistan only had very few places it could call home. Unlike other animals and birds, the GIB had only six places in entire India as his ‘official’ home, always under threat. The places included few protected areas in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. The number of the bird had been drastically declining since 1980, from 1500-2000, it came down to 300 in 2010.
Let’s hope that the ‘up-gradation’ of the status of GIB prompts the policy makers to take steps to protect the bird! This is high time that government acted to protect the bird and started a conservation programme for it on the lines of Project Tiger. Unfortunately, one can not expect any such decision from the policy makers who cut down the funds allocated to Project Tiger, leaving the national animal to the mercy of God!

Till the end of 2010, the GIB was listed as endangered because of its fragmented population. As is the case of extinction of all the species, except humans, hunting and habitat destruction have played a pivotal role in threat to very existence of the bird. The bird has lost its territory to cultivation, use of pesticide to a dangerous level.
The experts from the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), Wildlife Institute of India (WII), after thorough study of the habitat proposed that the GIB should be upgraded to critically endangered category.
The population of the adult birds has drastically declined from 21 in 2009 to mere nine in 2010 in the bustard sanctuary at Nannaj in Solapur district of Maharashtra. Hunting remains one of the major reasons for the decline in numbers as people take pride in boasting of hunting the bird. The breeding of the bird completely stopped in the sanctuary due to habitat destruction.