Guns can't save Bustards

Communities must be roped in to protect a species so dependent on common land

Tehelka, 7 June, 2013

IN THE first half of the 1980s, eight sanctuaries were set up in five states to arrest the alarming population slide of the Great Indian Bustard (GIB). Three decades later, the 750- plus population has collapsed to below 200 and the species is staring at imminent extinction.

Not only the GIB, the other three bustard species of India are also in trouble. TheBengal Florican is critically endangered, while the Lesser Florican and theHoubara Bustard are tottering. But having already disappeared from 90 percent of its original range, including three protected areas and two states, the GIB is at the precipice.

In 2010, the Convention of Biological Diversity adopted the ‘Aichi Targets’ to halt the extinction of known threatened species by 2020. Will India succeed in helping the GIB survive this decade? Not unless it introspects on how laws, eager notification of protected areas and enforcement have so far failed the species.

Bustards live on grassland. While the Bengal Florican needs wet fields, the rest prefer arid areas. But grassland also serves our agricultural and pastoral needs. Perhaps that is why only about 1 percent of India’s grassland is legally protected as conservation areas. Even so, the legal status is mostly on paper.

The rising demand for agricultural land made the states distribute some of these protected grasslands among communities. In many unprotected areas, the Wasteland Development Board has been destroying arid grasslands that it considers unproductive. Even within sanctuaries, the forest department is converting grassland into scrubland by planting exotic trees and weeds.

Across the GIB landscape, irrigation canals, highways, transmission lines, windmills, housing and industries are slicing apart and squeezing its habitat. In Gujarat’s Kutch, encroachment into the bustard’s territory continues unabated. In Rajasthan’s desert districts, the Indira Gandhi Nahar Project has suddenly made flood irrigation routine.

In a number of traditionally arid bustard habitats, irrigation triggered a shift from monsoon-dependent crops, such as sorghum or millet, to irrigation-fed cash crops like sugarcane, grapes or cotton. Use of pesticide or herbicide and mechanised farming has made things worse.

Against such onslaughts, the conservation response so far has been restricted to protecting small traditional patches where lekking (competitive display by male GIBs) and nesting take place. Unfortunately, not all such traditional breeding grounds come under sanctuary boundaries. Even if governments take over all such patches, the GIB will remain vulnerable for most part of the year when the bird roams wide and far.

The GIB breeds during March-September and lekking to hatching takes about four months. Even if the birds are under the forest guards’ watch during these months of limited movements, they are at the local community’s mercy the rest of the year when they forage in the larger landscape. Unless the GIB feels secure, particularly in the first year of the chick when it follows the mother around, in these non-protected community- owned or private fields, the species cannot hope to make a comeback.

By the time this goes to press, Rajasthan, where 80-100 GIBs still survive, will probably have notified its state Project Bustard plan. Its focus has been on capacity building of the forest staff at the Desert National Park and better protection against hunting. But bustards are also vulnerable to dogs kept by local pastoral and farming communities and the state is yet to reject the dubious cheetah project that seeks to introduce yet another predator in the GIB habitat.

The conventional strategy to save the GIB includes restricting over-grazing and certain checks on agricultural practices in and around the sanctuary land. While some of these steps are necessary during the breeding season, high-handed approaches usually antagonise the communities and may end up being the final nail in the GIB’s coffin.

Instead, the forest department and conservationists have to involve the communities in GIB conservation and incentivise them suitably for making sacrifices for the species. Fortunately, bustards feed on agricultural pests and do not pose any threat to communities. Yet, building a participatory model of conservation is never easy. But there is simply no alternative.