Critically Endangered Gharials: one found dead in Budhi Rapti stream

Chitwan : A male gharial—a critically endangered species of crocodile—was found dead in the Budhi Rapti stream at Ratnanagar Municipality-8 in Chitwan.The Chitwan National Park (CNP) said the gharial was found dead in the stream that flows through the Baghmara Buffer Zone Community Forest near Sauraha on Monday. ‘The gharial’s snout was trapped shut by a piece of fishing net while his abdomen was punctured with a fishing hook,’ said Ganesh Prasad Tiwari, the information officer at the CNP.

According to conservationists, while gharial itself is a rare species, its male population is even rarer. ‘The death of a male gharial is a huge loss in the conservation sector,’ said Tiwari. The gharial has been enlisted as a protected species in Nepal. Rampant use of fishing nets, human activities, river pollution and depletion in the number of fish are the major challenges to gharial conservation. The CNP has banned the use of fishing nets but the gharial death caused by fishing nets goes unchecked in Chitwan.

Gharials are found in freshwater rivers and streams where human encroachment is low and the number of fish is high. The Narayani and Rapti rivers that flow through the national park area are major habitats of the endangered animal.

The gharial population, which was estimated to be between 5,000 and 10,000 worldwide in the 1940s, slumped by almost 96 percent to below 200 by 1976. This species—the only surviving member of the Gavialidae family—breeds only in the wild areas of Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and Pakistan. The IUCN estimated that the current global gharial population is around 300-900 as of 2020.

With an objective to conserve the endangered species by hatching its eggs and releasing them in the rivers when they grow up to two metres in length, the CNP established a gharial breeding centre at Kasara in 1978. The centre has seen some success. There were just 80 gharials in the country before the breeding centre was established. The use of fishing nets, according to conservationists, is the major challenge in gharial conservation in the country.