Overview
- The chick, which hatched Thursday, March 26, is being raised by a wild foster female in Kutch under active field monitoring.
- Officials executed a year‑planned, halt‑free 770 km road transfer from Sam in Rajasthan to Naliya in Gujarat, carrying a fertile egg in a handheld incubator.
- The team used a “jumpstart” method that swaps an infertile wild egg with a fertile one so the wild female incubates and rears the chick in its natural habitat.
- Gujarat’s Kutch grasslands now hold only three known females and no males, so the swap followed an infertile laying confirmed in 2025 to restart local reproduction.
- Breeding centres at Sam and Ramdevra house 73 bustards for future rewilding, but long‑term recovery still depends on cutting deaths from power lines and protecting grassland habitat, even as leaders trade claims over who first pushed the effort.