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Telangana Asked WII to Design an Indian Roller Conservation-breeding Project

Indian roller perched on a post against a blue background
Conservation · Management

Telangana decided in 2026 to pursue conservation breeding for Indian Roller (Coracias benghalensis), the state bird, and asked the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) to prepare a detailed project. The plan described in reporting on 5 July was to breed birds under managed conditions and later release them into suitable habitat, but the programme had not yet begun.

The immediate development was therefore a state-level management decision and a formal request for specialist project design, not the start of captive breeding or a release programme. Telangana Today reported that Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) Vinay Kumar wrote to WII seeking scientific and technical support and offering logistical assistance from the state.

WII was asked to prepare the detailed project

The proposal followed directions from Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy to the state wildlife authorities after concerns were raised about declining Indian Roller numbers. Forest Department sources told Telangana Today that the state planned to establish the conservation-breeding work in a forest block, with captive-bred birds to be released later if the programme was developed and implemented.

Population monitoring is primarily a state responsibility

An official Rajya Sabha answer from February 2026 provides useful background to the Telangana initiative. India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change stated that population assessments for wildlife other than nationally monitored flagship species are carried out by states and Union Territories and are not collated into a single national estimate by the ministry.

The same answer confirmed that Indian Roller is listed in Schedule II of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 and is protected against hunting. It also listed broader national mechanisms available to states, including protected areas, habitat-management funding, monitoring and wildlife-protection measures.

The parliamentary answer did not itself confirm a national Indian Roller population estimate or endorse the specific decline figure raised in the question. The Telangana conservation-breeding decision should therefore be understood as a state response to local and wider concerns about the species rather than as a programme based on a nationally standardised census.

At this stage, the change was administrative rather than demographic: Telangana had requested a species-specific conservation-breeding plan from WII, while breeding and any later release remained future steps dependent on project design and implementation.

Sources and image credit

  1. Reddy, T. K. (2026). Telangana to launch conservation breeding of Indian Roller, seeks WII support.Main contemporary source for the 2026 state action. It reports that the Telangana government decided to pursue conservation breeding, that the Forest Department wrote to the Wildlife Institute of India requesting a detailed project and expert support, that the state offered logistical assistance, and that later release was intended. No publicly accessible copy of the Forest Department letter or separate official project document was found during review.
  2. Government of India, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. (2026). Protection of Indian Roller — Rajya Sabha Unstarred Question No. 1500.Official background source. The ministry states that population assessments for non-flagship wildlife are undertaken by states and Union Territories and are not collated nationally, and confirms that Indian Roller is listed in Schedule II of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972.

Image: DrRohithgurugubelli — Indian Roller (Coracias benghalensis), photographed 5 November 2023; Wikimedia Commons; CC BY-SA 4.0. Representative species image, not a bird from the proposed Telangana conservation-breeding project. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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