Three threatened animals — the Greater One-horned Rhinoceros, the Great Indian Bustard, and the Pygmy Hog — took centre stage at the 91st Meeting of the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (SC-NBWL), held at Coimbatore on 9 July 2026. The meeting, chaired by Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, reviewed conservation strategies for each species and approved the release of scientific publications on Rhinoceros, Sloth Bear, and the Great Indian Bustard — adding to India’s growing library of species-specific conservation research.
The committee also cleared more than 100 development proposals — roads, bridges, defence infrastructure, power lines, optical fibre cables — affecting areas in and around wildlife habitats. The twin agenda of protecting critical species while adjudicating development clearances captures the essential tension that India’s wildlife governance bodies navigate at every meeting.
Three Species in Focus
The Greater One-horned Rhinoceros, found primarily in Kaziranga and a handful of other protected areas in Assam and West Bengal, is one of conservation’s genuine success stories — its population has recovered from under 200 animals in the early 20th century to over 4,000 today. At the 91st meeting, the committee reviewed a long-term conservation strategy built around the Rhino DNA Indexing System, a genetic database that enables individual identification of each animal, tracks lineages, detects poaching by matching seized horns to database records, and informs translocation decisions to prevent inbreeding in smaller populations.
The Great Indian Bustard is in a far more precarious position. Once widespread across the grasslands of Rajasthan, Gujarat, and central India, the species is now critically endangered — estimates put the wild population at fewer than 150 individuals. Habitat loss to agriculture and solar energy infrastructure, combined with mortality from power line collisions, have driven a catastrophic decline. The committee reviewed the future conservation strategy for the species, a process that involves navigating the conflict between renewable energy expansion (which requires land in the same dry grasslands where Bustards breed) and species survival. India’s Supreme Court has been involved in this tension, with contested orders on underground power cabling in Bustard habitats.
The Pygmy Hog, the world’s smallest and rarest wild pig, survives in a single location: the Manas National Park in Assam. Fewer than 250 individuals are thought to remain in the wild. The committee approved the inclusion of the Pygmy Hog under the Species Recovery Programme — a formal conservation effort that has previously seen captive-bred individuals released back into protected habitat. Inclusion in the programme means dedicated government resources for breeding, habitat management, and eventual reintroduction.
The Development Clearance Workload
Beyond species-specific decisions, the committee considered over 100 proposals for infrastructure and development activities in or near wildlife sanctuaries and national parks — a routine but consequential part of NBWL’s work. The proposals ranged from drinking water supply schemes and road widening to defence installations and mining operations.
Each proposal is evaluated against its ecological impact, the importance of the project for public welfare or national development, and the adequacy of mitigation measures. The committee reiterated that developmental projects should be implemented with safeguards to minimise adverse impacts on wildlife and habitats — language that has featured in SC-NBWL decisions for years, though environmental advocates have long argued that the clearance rate is too high relative to the ecological scrutiny applied.
The committee also reviewed progress on directions from the 7th Meeting of the National Board for Wildlife, chaired by the Prime Minister — signalling that decisions taken at the highest level of India’s wildlife governance chain are filtering down to the implementing agencies.
What the Meeting Signals
The Coimbatore session — held at the Central Academy for State Forest Service alongside an NTCA meeting and the inauguration of the Centre of Excellence on Human-Wildlife Conflict — suggests a deliberate effort to concentrate multiple threads of India’s wildlife conservation agenda in a single forum. The proximity of these events creates an opportunity for cross-cutting dialogue that doesn’t always happen when each body meets separately in Delhi.
For species like the Great Indian Bustard, where the conservation challenge is inseparable from land-use policy and energy infrastructure decisions made by other ministries, that kind of integrated attention is exactly what is needed. Whether the committee meetings translate into decisive on-ground action for critically endangered species remains to be seen — but the species are at least on the agenda, and the research base is growing. Environment sustainability in India increasingly depends on these high-level governance bodies making the right calls on the hardest cases.
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Source: Press Information Bureau, Government of India. Original release (PRID 2282792), 9 July 2026.