Houbara Bustard
Our brand association with Houbara Bustard: Houbara Outdoors is a registered trademark in India. Under the wings of this beautiful bird, we manufacture quality glamping products for the Indian and global markets. We wanted to do something meaningful, so we created a logo in which an endangered bird, the Houbara Bustard, is at centre stage. We also named the enterprise after the bird’s name, Houbara Outdoors. Our prime aim in doing so was to generate awareness among the Indian population about the endangered, beautiful bird of the Thar desert and Gujrat.
Why did we
choose this bird?
The reason for choosing this bird as our brand ambassador was that it is a native of the Thar desert. We chose this as our target for CSR activities. How are we participating? We have decided that 5% of our net profit will go towards the conservation of this bird. We are working with communities situated along the migration route of this bird as well as avian experts.
Houbara Bustard
Our brand association with Houbara Bustard: Houbara Outdoors is a registered trademark in India. Under the wings of this beautiful bird, we manufacture quality glamping products for the Indian and global markets. We wanted to do something meaningful, so we created a logo in which an endangered bird, the Houbara Bustard, is at centre stage. We also named the enterprise after the bird’s name, Houbara Outdoors. Our prime aim in doing so was to generate awareness among the Indian population about the endangered, beautiful bird of the Thar desert and Gujrat.
Classification:
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata Class:
Aves Order: Otidiformes Family: Otididae
Genus: Chlamydotis
Species: Chlamydotis macqueenii
Species: There are three subspecies of Houbara bustard.
01
Chlamydotis undulata undulata (approximately 10,000 individuals) is a resident of North Africa, where its population is known to have declined in Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia, as well as possibly in Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco, and Sudan.
02
Chlamydotis undulata fuertaventurae (700–750 birds) in the Canary Islands, Spain
03
Chlamydotis macqueenii, also called Macqueen’s Bustard, is found in Asia.
Taxonomy:
Psophia undulate was the scientific name proposed by Joseph Franz von Jacquin in 1784, who described a houbara brought from Tripoli to Vienna's Tiergarten Schönbrunn. Otis Macqueenii was proposed by John Edward Grey in 1832 for a bustard from India drawn by Thomas Hardwicke. The African houbara was subordinated to the genus Chlamydotis by René Lesson in 1839. Houbara fuertaventurae was proposed by Walter Rothschild and Ernst Hartert in 1894 for a houbara from Fuerteventura Island.
The MacQueen's bustard was long regarded as a subspecies of the African houbara. It was proposed as a distinct species in 2003 because of differences in plumage, vocalisations, and courtship behaviour. The British Ornithologists' Union's Taxonomic Records Committee's decision to accept this split has been questioned on the grounds that the differences in the male courtship displays may be functionally trivial and would not prevent interbreeding, whereas a difference in a pre-copulation display would indicate that the two are separate species. The committee responded to this scepticism by explaining that there are differences in both courtship and pre-copulation displays.
Characteristics
The species lives in an arid climate. It is omnivorous, taking seeds, insects, and other small creatures. Asian Houbara bustards are known to migrate in thousands to the Indian subcontinent every winter. In fact, it is similar to the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard, which is native to India. After breeding during the spring season, the Asian Houbara bustards migrate south to spend the winter in Pakistan, the Arabian Peninsula, and nearby Southwest Asia. Habitat:- The species lives in an arid climate. Houbara Bustard’s population extends from northeast Asia, across central Asia, the Middle East, and the Arabian Peninsula, to reach the Sinai desert (Egypt). These birds migrate to Pakistan, the Arabian Peninsula, and nearby Southwest Asia in the winter season after breeding in the spring season.
Physical Attributes
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The colour of the upper part of the body is sandy-brown, while the lower part is white.
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It has a white crest and pale eyes.
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It has a long neck and tail.
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Distinctive black stripe on the side of the neck, which can be erected
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Both males and females look similar, except females are a bit smaller in size.
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Eaglelike in flight with deep wing beats
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White patches on the wingtips are framed in black
The wintering population of Houbara bustards in India inhabits sandy and stony semi-desert and is specialized to exist in arid conditions where trees are absent and both shrub cover and herb layer are sparse. The houbara is omnivorous and opportunistic, as its diet reflects the local and seasonal abundance of various plants and small animals. It feeds on vegetable matter, including fruits, seeds, shoots, leaves, flowers, young shoots, drupes, and berries growing over leaves. It is also known to feed on cultivated plants such as beans, peas, alfalfa, and mustard, if available. Besides a vegetarian diet, it also feeds on invertebrates such as grasshoppers, beetles, spiders, ants, snails, and small vertebrates such as snakes, lizards, and geckos.
Current State of Houbara Bustard
According to the International Fund for Houbara Conservation (IFHC), roughly 42,000 Asian Houbara Bustards and over 22,000 North African Houbara Bustards remain. As per the status characterised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Houbara Bustad is in a vulnerable state. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) has placed them on the most sensitive listing, which prohibits any commercial trade of these birds.
The Indian context
The Houbara bustard is a rare bird and is known as Tillore in the Thar Desert. The Bird population is Declining due to habitat loss and degradation as desert areas are developed for agriculture and infrastructure projects. This decline may be due to habitat loss and fragmentation compounded by high hunting pressure from falconers, as seen today even in the breeding areas in Central Asia. Classified as Vulnerable by the IUCN in 1994 and 2005. In India, too, they are opportunistically hunted by local poachers. But large-scale hunting by falconers, as seen in Pakistan, fortunately, does not occur here.
In India, between 1994 and 1998
Dr. Asad R. Rahmani, Director, BNHS, and a team of researchers that included the first author conducted detailed surveys and found the bustard in eleven districts of Rajasthan, with the major concentration in the Bikaner, Jodhpur, Barmer, and Jaisalmer districts. In Rajasthan, of the thirty-eight sites censused, the population was confirmed at thirty-four sites. But, as per local information, illegal hunting was occurring then and may still occur at at least eleven of these sites. In India, the Houbara Bustard is protected under the Wildlife Protection Act (1972) and classified under Schedule I, Part III.
Migration Routes
In 1996, the Species Survival Commission of the IUCN organized a meeting in Muscat, Oman, to formulate conservation management of the species in Asia and the Middle East. This meeting brought out some very important recommendations that included improvements in protection measures, further research on migration, and assisting Saudi Arabia to conclude an international management agreement under the Bonn Convention. In 1997, the National Avifauna Research Centre in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), fitted satellite transmitters on Houbara to study the migratory routes. They found that the Houbara migrated to northern China, covering 6,600 km in just 54 days, and crossed Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan to reach the Chinese province of Xinjiang. Eight months later, it followed the same route and returned to Abu Dhabi.
Population: According to BirdLife International, the last subspecies occupy six subregions: resident and migratory birds occur in parts of the Middle East and in Russia, Iran, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, from western Kazakhstan to Turkmenistan, on the Mongolian plateau and in the Gobi desert of Mongolia, and in western China.
The population of Macqueen’s Bustard is estimated between 39,000 and 52,000 individuals, mostly breeding in Kazakhstan (30,000–40,000), although numbers in mainland China are likely to be much higher than the current estimate of 500 birds. A major decline is reported from countries such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, Kazakistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, India, and China.
Conservation
Numerous conservation initiatives have been started over the years, with the Desert National Park (DNP) in Jaisalmer being the largest. The DNP was created in 1980 to safeguard the desert ecology and is spread across 3,000 square kilometers in Jaisalmer and Barmer. Most nations prohibit hunting bustards. The practice was also fully outlawed in Pakistan in 2015 by the Supreme Court of that nation, but the ruling was overturned two years later since Pakistan now uses it as a tool for its foreign policy.