Great Indian Bustard Conservation

The Great Indian Bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps), Rajasthan's state bird and one of the planet's most imperilled birds, is being pulled back from near-extinction by an intensive captive-breeding effort in the Thar Desert. By 14 June 2026 the programme's captive flock stood at 94 birds, and officials are preparing to gradually return some of them to the wild. Yet fewer than a couple of hundred survive in the open, where collisions with high-voltage power lines remain the single deadliest threat -- a clash between clean-energy expansion and species survival that has repeatedly reached the Supreme Court.