RAS question
A Great Indian Bustard (GIB) chick hatched in Gujarat after a decade using an egg from Rajasthan. Which conservation technique was used in this achievement?
Correct answer: (D) Jumpstart approach — transporting eggs 800 km from Rajasthan's Jaisalmer breeding centre to Gujarat.
Gujarat's Great Indian Bustard chick hatched after a decade through the jumpstart approach, in which a captive-bred egg from Rajasthan was transported to Kutch and placed in a nest for hatching.
Explanation
The conservation technique was the jumpstart approach. The PIB release says Gujarat saw a GIB chick after a decade in Kutch through this novel measure, coordinated by MoEFCC, the Rajasthan and Gujarat Forest Departments, and the Wildlife Institute of India. The method mattered because Gujarat had only three surviving female GIBs in Kutch, so a fertile wild egg was not possible there. A captive-bred GIB egg from Rajasthan's conservation breeding programme was moved by road for over 19 hours, covering about 770 km from Sam in Rajasthan to Naliya in Gujarat, in a handheld portable incubator. It was then replaced in the nest, incubated by the female, and hatched on 26 March.
Why the other options are wrong
- (A) Cloning is wrong because the achievement used a real captive-bred egg transported in an incubator, not preserved DNA or laboratory cloning.
- (B) In-situ breeding through habitat expansion is wrong because the key intervention was moving and placing a captive-bred egg from Rajasthan, not simply protecting or enlarging habitat in Gujarat.
- (C) Imported GIB from Pakistan is wrong because the egg came from Rajasthan's conservation breeding programme, with no imported birds involved.
Concept
This tests ex-situ assisted conservation and species recovery methods for critically endangered fauna. It recurs in RAS because Rajasthan is central to Great Indian Bustard conservation and inter-state wildlife recovery is a frequent environment-current affairs theme.