An unusual contest

Rajasthan's state bird, the great Indian bustard, might lose its last natural habitat to wind and solar power plants

- SHUCHITA JHA , SANWATA, JAISALMER

IT IS a January afternoon, but it feels like peak summer. A mild breeze makes up for the shards of winter, caressing the face as the eyes narrow under the glare of the sun. Birds chirp in the trees, and as far as the eye can see, there is nothing but a few hundred camels happily grazing away on the thorny bushes in the Degrai oran, a sacred grove, in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. The windmills, visible at a distance, tower over everything else in the vicinity.

“This is the largest and one of the last orans in the area,” says Masinga Ram, a camel handler from Sanwata village, adjoining the oran. For centuries, the trees in the oran, spread over 60,000 bighas (approximately 100 sq km), have remained untouched by the people in the villages. “It is more than 600 years old and was declared a protected area by ruler Vikramdev in the 15 th century. Felling of trees is forbidden in the area. We just collect the dead branches on the ground and pluck ripened fruits for ourselves, the rest is all for the animals and birds,” says Shivdan Singh Bhati, a farmer and a member of the Degrai Mata Trust, which looks after the temple inside the oran. It is in the middle of a 13,000 sq km wide biodiversity-rich land that is among the last natural habitats of Rajasthan's state bird, the great Indian bustard (gib), listed under the “critically endangered” category by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2011 (see 'Net loss', p46).

An open stretch of land with long hours of sunlight, high-speed winds and large plains, the area has become a hub of green energy. Windmills and solar plants are a part of the landscape. More solar plants and transmission towers are under construction.