A recent study, published in Frontiers in Conservation Science, has mapped a broad migration flyway spanning about 206,000 sq km across India for the endangered Lesser Florican (Sypheotides indicus).
The critically endangered Lesser Florican, the world’s smallest bustard, uses a high-density migration corridor of nearly 60,000 sq km across western and central India while remaining strongly dependent on grasslands.
The birds move through croplands and other open habitats, the satellite-tracking study has found.
“By linking fine-scale movement behaviour with landscape-scale patterns of land-use change and population decline, this study reinforces a central conclusion: the Lesser florican remains fundamentally a grassland specialist whose persistence is significantly constrained by the amount, configuration, and quality of remaining grassland habitat.
While some behavioural flexibility exists through seasonal habitat shifts and divergent migratory strategies, this flexibility is unlikely to offset the ongoing trajectory of grassland loss, fragmentation, and agricultural intensification,” the study said, according to 'The Hindustan Times'.
The study was authored by Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) and chief wildlife warden of Gujarat, Jaipal Singh, lead researcher of the Gujarat forest department Mohan Ram, deputy director of The Corbett Foundation Devesh Gadhavi, along with Tahir Ali Rather, Vidhi Modi and Dushyantsinh Jhala of the Foundation.
Researchers fitted Global Positioning System (GPS)-Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) transmitters on 12 lesser floricans between 2020 and 2022 and tracked them until 2025.
The birds were tagged at Blackbuck National Park in Velavadar in Bhavnagar district and the Kutch Bustard Sanctuary and adjoining Naliya grasslands in Kutch, sites separated by about 450 km.
The researchers described the 12 birds as the largest cohort of lesser floricans tracked through a single tagging effort in India. The tracking produced 160,166 location records, of which 150,147 GPS fixes were retained for analysis.
The transmitters were active for a combined 4,466 days.
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