Ahmedabad/Barmer/Jaisalmer, March 29 -- A Great Indian Bustard chick has been sighted in the wild in Gujarat for the first time in a decade, after a captive-bred egg was transported 770 kilometres from Rajasthan in a portable incubator and placed in the nest of a wild female - a technique conservationists are calling the first successful inter-state "jumpstart" in the species' history. The development carries particular weight for Gujarat, where the GIB population has effectively collapsed. Only three females are believed to survive in the state's wild, and no males remain; natural breeding has been impossible for years. The chick, now being raised by its foster mother in the Naliya area of Kutch, represents the only wild birth in the state in a decade, Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav stated in a social media post announcing its sighting on Saturday. The jumpstart approach, developed under Project GIB, works by replacing an infertile egg laid by a wild female with a fertile captive-bred egg. The wild female, unaware of the substitution, incubates and raises the hatchling - giving the chick the behavioural grounding of wild rearing while bypassing the near-total egg predation that has long undermined natural GIB reproduction. The egg was sourced from the conservation breeding centre in Sam, Rajasthan, and carried to Kutch, Gujarat in a 19-hour non-stop road journey using a portable incubator maintained at stable temperature throughout. A 770-kilometre halt-free corridor was established for the transit. The egg was placed in the nest on March 22; the chick hatched on March 26. The nest was monitored throughout using remote CCTV systems. Yadav described the birth as a "revolutionary step" in efforts to revive the critically endangered species. The operation was coordinated by the Union environment ministry, the forest departments of Rajasthan and Gujarat, and the Wildlife Institute of India. Yadav attributed the programme's origins to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who he said had envisioned Project GIB in 2011; it was formally launched in 2016. Officials said the jumpstart method is distinct from conventional captive breeding and release. A chick hatched this way grows entirely in the wild, under the care of a wild female, developing the foraging habits and environmental familiarity that captive-raised birds typically lack - qualities critical to survival if and when rewilding begins. The number of birds at India's GIB conservation breeding centres at Sam, Jaisalmer and Ramdevra in Rajasthan has reached 73, including five chicks added during the current breeding season, according to Yadav. The ministry has indicated that rewilding of captive-bred birds is the next phase of the programme's long-term plan. Wildlife experts have consistently cautioned, however, that habitat restoration - protecting and improving the grassland habitat the species depends on in the wild - has lagged behind progress in captive breeding, limiting the pool of viable release sites....