New Delhi, March 28 A Great Indian Bustard (GIB) chick was born in Kutch, Gujarat, after a decade, thanks to a novel conservation measure called the "jumpstart" approach, Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav announced on Saturday.
"Gujarat has seen a GIB chick after a decade, through a novel conservation measure – the 'jumpstart' approach, coordinated by the Ministry, the State Forest Departments of Rajasthan and Gujarat, and the Wildlife Institute of India," he said in a post on X.
According to officials from the Environment Ministry, this is the first inter-state "jumpstart" initiative for the GIB in the country, which was successfully executed in Gujarat.
It is important to note that 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 a grueling 770 km road journey to transport an incubated egg to the desired nesting site in Kutch, which was undertaken without interruption by creating a continuous corridor from Rajasthan's Sam to Naliya in Gujarat.
The female successfully incubated the fertile egg and hatched the chick on March 26, with the field monitoring team observing the young chick being cared for by its foster mother in its natural habitat.
"The minister informed that the number of birds in conservation breeding centers 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 forward towards rewilding birds in the near future as part of long-term conservation planning," the Ministry said in a statement.
"Providing further details on the groundbreaking 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 program in Rajasthan was transported by road for over 19 hours in a handheld portable incubator and was successfully placed in the nest on March 22," it added.