New Delhi, March 29 Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Sunday recalled that in June 2010, as the then environment minister, he had written to the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, calling for conservation efforts to revive the Great Indian Bustard population in the grasslands of Kutch.
"As usual, all the credit is being given to the PM for the initiative to protect the Great Indian Bustard in Gujarat. It is being said that he came up with this idea in 2011," Ramesh said in a post on X.
"Just for historical interest, on June 9, 2010, the then Union Minister of Environment and Forests had written to the then CM of Gujarat, calling for conservation efforts to revive the Great Indian Bustard population in the grasslands of Kutch. Those involved are aware of this background," said Ramesh, who was the environment minister between May 2009 and July 2011.
Incidentally, in March 1961, India's greatest ornithologist Salim Ali had wanted the Great Indian Bustard to be declared as the national bird because it was facing extinction, he said.
But in December 1963, the Indian Board of Wildlife, chaired by Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar of Mysore, chose the peacock for what it called compelling historical, mythological, religious and cultural reasons, he said.
"As a saying goes, 'The peacock is proud.' However, it faces serious competition from a non-biological being," the Congress leader added.
In his letter to Modi in 2010, Ramesh had said, "You are aware that the Great Indian Bustard (GIB) is a highly endangered species, and the grasslands of Kutch in Gujarat are one of the last remaining pockets that hold promise for recovery of this species."
Ornithologists consider the conservation of the Indian Bustard as equally important as that of lions and tigers, he had said.
"I am writing to request you to immediately intervene and prevent the diversion of revenue gauchar land to agriculture, and to ensure that the district officials support the Naliya conservation initiatives. If we do not intervene, the possibility of the GIB going extinct in Gujarat is very real and high," Ramesh had said in his letter to Modi.
Ramesh's post on X comes a day after Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav announced that a Great Indian Bustard (GIB) chick was born in Gujarat's Kutch after a decade through a novel conservation measure known as the jump-start approach.
"Gujarat sees a GIB chick after a decade, through a novel conservation measure, the jumpstart approach, coordinated by the Ministry, State Forest Departments of Rajasthan and Gujarat, and Wildlife Institute of India," the minister said in a post on X.
"Project GIB, envisioned by PM Shri @narendramodi ji in 2011 to conserve GIB in its natural habitats including Gujarat, was launched in 2016," he said.
According to environment ministry officials, this is the first interstate jump-start initiative of the GIB in the country that was successfully executed in Gujarat.
It is important to mention that in Gujarat, only three female GIBs are surviving in the grasslands of Kutch, leaving no possibility of having a fertile egg in the wild, they said.
It took an arduous 770-km road journey to transport an incubated egg to the desired nesting site in Kutch, which was undertaken without a break by creating a halt-free corridor from Rajasthan's Sam to Naliya in Gujarat.
The female completed the incubation of the fertile egg and successfully hatched the chick on March 26, with the field monitoring team observing the young chick being reared by its foster mother in its natural habitat.
"The minister informed that the number of birds in conservation breeding centres at Sam and Ramdevra in Rajasthan has reached 73, with the addition of five new chicks during the current breeding season. He added that India is now moving ahead towards the rewilding of birds in the near future as part of long-term conservation planning," the ministry said in a statement.
"Giving further details on the path-breaking initiative, the minister said that the female GIB tagged in August 2025 laid an infertile egg in Kutch, where the local population had lost all its males long ago.
"In a major trans-state conservation effort, a captive-bred GIB egg from the conservation breeding programme in Rajasthan was transported by road for over 19 hours in a handheld portable incubator and was successfully replaced in the nest on 22nd March," the ministry said.
