Great Bustard nude calendar (From Salisbury Journal)

Great Bustard nude calendar

4:00pm Tuesday 3rd January 2012 in News By Journal Reporter

THE Great Bustard Group has become the latest organisation to use naked models on its annual calendar.

Bustards in the Buff features volunteers from the organisation posing tastefully without clothes.

The group has been working to reintroduce the world’s heaviest flying bird to Salisbury Plain.

Dozens of chicks have been imported from Russia over the past seven years and released on the Plain.

The group is now working on a scheme to bring over fertile eggs from abandoned nests on the Russian Steppes and incubate them onsite in Wiltshire.

Group founder David Waters said: “Until now the GBG has imported young Great Bustards from the field station in the village of Diakovka in Saratov for release in the wild in Britain.

“In 2012 GBG aims to bring Great Bustard eggs to the UK for the first time. This will enable the birds to finish the quarantine health checks and start the release phase much earlier. Based on the success of projects with other species, this will enable them to better adapt to wild conditions.

“In order to undertake this new development the GBG urgently needs to buy the necessary equipment. Portable incubators for the journey, stationary incubators and hatchers for the quarantine unit, heat lamps and other similar equipment is required. Help is essential to fund this historic undertaking. ”

Although they have secured long-term funding through the European Union’s Life Fund, the group constantly needs to top up its coffers and sell a wide range of merchandise, the latest of which is the calendar, which costs £11.99.

It is one of many items for sale on its website, which also includes Great Bustard wine, ale specially brewed by the Stonehenge Brewery at Netheravon, Dirty Bustard soaps and Greedy Bustard chocolate.

There are also T-shirts and polo shirts bearing the legends Angry Bustard, Clever Bustard and Silly Bustard.