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Updated India Estimates Showed No Clear Trend for Grey Junglefowl

Grey junglefowl male in India
Conservation · Population & status

The 2025 interim update from State of India’s Birds reported revised national trend estimates for grey junglefowl (Gallus sonneratii) in India. The updated numerical values were released on 6 May 2026 as part of a nationwide dataset based on citizen-science observations submitted to eBird.

The revised long-term trend for India was estimated at +0.75%, while the current annual trend was +2.9% per year. Uncertainty around both estimates was too broad to establish a clear national increase or decline on either time scale. The species page still displays the carried-over 2023 category Trend Inconclusive for both trends; these labels were not recalculated from the 2025 numerical estimates.

The update estimated the grey junglefowl’s Indian distribution range at 319,378 km². State of India’s Birds classifies the species as a resident forest specialist endemic to mainland India and retains it in the Low conservation-priority category.

The interim release updated numerical distribution-range, long-term-trend and current-trend values for 942 previously assessed bird species using approximately 48 million observations submitted to eBird through 31 May 2025. The trend values describe change in a reporting-based abundance index rather than direct counts of individual birds. The assessment categories themselves were not recalculated in this update.

Sources and image credit

  1. State of India’s Birds Partnership. (2026). State of India’s Birds: Range, trends, and conservation status (Version 2) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20036633Primary 2026 dataset release created 6 May 2026. Version 2 updated numerical distribution range size, long-term trend and current annual trend values for 942 previously evaluated species using approximately 48 million eBird observations through 31 May 2025; the assessment categories were unchanged.
  2. State of India’s Birds Partnership. (2025). State of India’s Birds factsheet: Grey Junglefowl (Gallus sonneratii).National species page displaying the 2025 update: long-term trend +0.75% (−25.69 to +36.28), current annual trend +2.88% (−0.19 to +5.95), distribution range 319,378 km² (319,097–319,659), retained categories Trend Inconclusive for both trends, resident status, forest specialization, mainland-India endemicity and Low conservation priority.

Image: sunnyjosef / Wikimedia Commons — grey junglefowl photographed in India, 9 April 2024; cropped to 16:9. Representative image for this story; not presented as an animal or scene from the reported study or event. · CC BY 4.0 · Source

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