New Delhi, June 14 (IANS) Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav said on Sunday that Project Great Indian Bustard (GIB) has added three more chicks to the conservation breeding programme in the last couple of days.

The new additions have taken the total number of chicks hatched so far in the fourth year of captive breeding to 26, said an official statement

Sharing the development on the social media platform X, Yadav said the three new chicks emerged from one wild-collected egg and two captive-laid eggs.

He said the captive stock has now grown to 94 birds, with more chicks expected this season.

The Minister said that in the fourth year of GIB captive breeding, 26 chicks have hatched so far, including 18 through artificial insemination, four through natural breeding and four from wild-collected eggs.

Yadav said that in exchange for the wild eggs, three chicks have hatched in the wild in Rajasthan through jumpstart intervention to improve founder genetic diversity and mitigate predation risk.

Earlier in March, Yadav said the Project Great Indian Bustard (GIB) had entered the fourth year of its captive breeding programme with the hatching of two new chicks at the Conservation Breeding Centre of Rajasthan.

The Minister said that under the environmentally sensitive leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the country is well on track to make the project a great success.

Yadav shared this development in a post on the social media platform X, describing it as another milestone achieved under Project GIB. The Minister said the two chicks hatched at the Conservation Breeding Centre in Rajasthan around mid-March, one from natural mating and the other from artificial insemination.

He said there were plans to achieve the milestone of soft releasing some chicks into the world.

Yadav had said some of this year’s captive-bred chicks will be soft released in the wild, marking a new, challenging beginning for the project. He also congratulated the forest officials of the Rajasthan Forest Department for the achievement.

–IANS

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