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India-Pakistan Conflict Forces Relocation of 9 Endangered Great Indian Bustard Chicks

Cross-border tensions disrupt critical conservation efforts for India’s rarest bird

X/@wii_india
Conservationists relocate Great Indian Bustard chicks to a safer facility due to India-Pakistan standoff. X/@wii_india

Scientists and forest officials shifted 9 of the 18 newborn Great Indian Bustard chicks, aged five to 28 days, to a safer facility in Arwar village of Ajmer district — about 500 km east — following shelling on May 10 amid India-Pakistan standoff, according to TOI.

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These Great Indian Bustard chicks were initially housed in Jaisalmer’s Ramdevra Great Indian Bustard Conservation Centre and Sam Conservation and Breeding Centre, both close to the India-Pakistan border, which had come under gunfire and artillery shelling.

TOI also reported that several of the chicks were hatched through artificial incubation to revive one of India’s critically endangered bird species. Fewer than 130 chicks are believed to remain in the wild.

“Arwar is a bigger centre than Sam, and additional infrastructure is under construction. Activities in Arwar are also similar [to what happens in Ramdevra and Sam],” Sutirtha Dutta, a Wildlife Institute of India (WII) senior scientist, who helms the bustard conservation programme told The Print. “We are also building an additional cage, which will be ready in the next one to two months,” Dutta added.

The cages being developed have the same model as those existing in the other centres, but will be larger. An additional cage will also be deployed to accommodate 20 birds.

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Hidden Environmental Cost of War

According to a ScienceDirect study, while the physically destructive nature of war and armed conflict, such as physical damage to landscapes and habitats, is well-known, it remains largely unquantified.

For instance, World War II indirectly caused the collapse of North Atlantic herring stocks by accelerating fishing through wartime technological advances. In Malaysia, Japanese occupation led to forest mismanagement and overexploitation. Between 1990-1991, the Gulf War further highlighted the vast and lasting environmental damage warfare can cause, the study noted.

Military training and preparedness, particularly the use of naval mid-frequency sonar also disrupts marine ecosystems and have been linked to whale strandings and deaths—likely caused by auditory damage and altered diving behavior—making naval activities both a direct (sound pollution) and indirect (technology) driver of biodiversity loss.

Conflict also contributes significantly to carbon emissions through military operations, infrastructure and post-war reconstruction. Further indirect impacts arise from the production and transportation of supplies and troops, compounding its effect on biodiversity via climate change.

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