The Gharial: India’s Most
Endangered Large Animal


 

The Gharial (scientific name: Gavinalis gangeticus) is the last surviving species from a very ancient lineage of crocodilians going back to pre-dinosaur years, over 100 million years ago. The gharial grows to over 20 feet in length and adult males sport a large bulbous projection on the tip of the long snout called a ‘ghara’ which gives it its name. Once common in all major rivers in the northern area of the Indian subcontinent, this strict fish-eater is harmless to humans and now faces imminent extinction. This is the story of the tragic fate of the strangest crocodiles on earth.

In the Beginning

In 1970, S Biswas of the Zoological Survey of India, alarmed at reports of the decline of the gharial in the rivers of north India, carried out the first scientific surveys of the species. His findings were grim; almost every where the gharial once occurred in abundance they were simply gone. In 1973 - 74, with the help from the Bombay Natural History Society, World Wildlife Fund India and the Madras Snake Park, Romulus Whitaker and his colleagues Dhruvajyoti Basu, E Mahadev and V Rajamani, carried out gharial surveys in much of its known range in India as well as in Nepal. It became apparent that the gharial was on the brink of extinction with less than 200 left in the wild.

By 1974, the estimated total population of wild gharial in the world had declined from what is inferred to have been 5,000 to 10,000 or more in the 1940s - and throughout its huge former range (spanning the rivers of the northern part of the Indian subcontinent from the Indus in present-day Pakistan 3000 km eastward across the Gangetic floodplain to the Irrawady in Myanmar) - to less than 200, a steep decline of about 96%.

The drastic decline in the gharial population over the last 60 years (three generations for the gharial) was due to over-hunting for skins and trophies, egg collection for consumption, killing for indigenous medicine, and drowning in fishing nets. In addition dams, barrages, irrigation canals, siltation, changes in river courses, artificial embankments, sand mining, riparian agriculture, domestic and feral livestock have combined to cause an extreme limitation to gharial range due to this excessive, irreversible loss of its riverine habitat.

These threats have not ceased; indeed, they have increased and continue to compromise the survival of the species. The misguided megaplan to interlink the major Indian rivers will be the final nail in the coffin. Gharial decline has gone hand in hand with the decline of other riverine wildlife, once reportedly abundant and now endangered, including the Ganges river dolphin and the mugger crocodile, several turtles, besides numerous waterfowl and well-known game and edible fish species, including mahseer and hilsa.

Action Plan

It was time to do something and in those magical days of Indira Gandhi’s concern for wildlife and the environment, the government was quick to act. Robert Bustard, crocodile consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations was called in to design a crocodile recovery programme for India. The other two species in India - saltwater crocodile and mugger crocodile - were also endangered but nowhere like the gharial.
Bustard’s scheme was to locate wild nests and collect the eggs before predators (including people) got them or flooding ruined the nests. The eggs were incubated for the 70 to 80 days it takes them to hatch and the hatchlings reared in specially constructed pens with the right amount of water, shade and little fish for the baby gharials to feed on. The reason being, gharials are fish-eaters and shun anything else.

Protection at Last

Five protected areas were established for the gharial and six hatching/rearing stations were set up: in Uttar Pradesh at Katerniaghat Sanctuary, the National Chambal Sanctuary, at Kukkrail near Lucknow. At Morena in Madhya Pradesh and at Sathkosia Gorge and Nandankanan Biological Park in Orissa. Captive breeding of the gharial was achieved at several zoos, including Nandankanan, Madras Crocodile Bank and Kukkrail as a backup to the wild population. A ‘College for Crocodile Researchers’ was started in Hyderabad in the 1970s, where some of the countries’ top crocodile biologists, including Lala Singh, BC Choudhury and Sudhakar Kar helped to pioneer crocodile studies and conservation.

Over the next ten years that the Project Crocodile was in action, over 12,000 gharial eggs were collected from the wild and captive bred nests and over 5000 gharials reared to about a metre or more in length and released in the wild. Over 3500 of these were released in the Chambal River alone, which is the biggest of all the protected areas for gharials at over 425 river kilometers in length. Researchers like SA Hussain of the Wildlife Institute of India, RJ Rao of Jiwaji University and RK Sharma of the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department spent weeks, every year, surveying, studying and counting along the Chambal River.

Decline

Slowly but surely, Project Crocodile started to wind down. The local people were not involved in conservation of river resources and, more often than not, they were alienated and angry at being told that their river was now for gharial and not for fishing or anything else. Funds were withdrawn from the egg collection and head-starting programmes and finally, in 1992, the then Inspector General for Wildlife in the Ministry of Environment and Forests called a halt to any further captive propagation of crocodiles.

Committed researchers in the state Wildlife Departments, the Wildlife Institute of India and others continued to carry out surveys as and when they could or as part of research projects. But despite the hard work by these dedicated field people, not enough could be done by the government to ensure the survival of the gharial even in their protected habitat. Damming, sand mining, commercial fishing with gill nets (the so-called ‘walls of death’ that tangle and drown even big 18-foot-long male gharial) ensured that the gharial was facing the deadliest period in its hundred million year existence.

Summary of the Gharial Head Starting Programme

From one perspective it seems that little more was accomplished than to throw over 5000 juvenile gharial into largely inhospitable habitats in Indian and Nepali rivers and leave them to their fate. In Chitawan National Park, Nepal, where 457 gharial were released, there were 16 nests in 1977 and in 2006 there were 6. So, reintroduction didn’t work so well there (though it is argued that at least total extinction has been averted by supplementation), thanks largely to growing and uncontrolled human pressures, including depletion of the fish resources.

In India’s Girwa River (Katerniaghat Sanctuary, with a mere five kilometers of ideal gharial habitat), where over a thousand gharial were released, there were 4 nests recorded in 1977 and 28 in 2008, so it might be inferred that 24 nesting females (2.6% of the total pre-2008 releasees) resulted from 30 years of reintroductions. This is seemingly not a great achievement for the money and effort spent, and as several knowledgeable researchers have suggested, perhaps ‘carrying capacity’ has been reached there.

In the third and most important remaining gharial breeding habitat, the Chambal River (the tri-state, National Chambal Sanctuary) where about 4,000 gharial were released, there were 12 nests recorded in 1978 and close to 80 in 2008. While nesting has apparently increased by over 500%, the recruited mature, reproducing females are only about 2% of the total number released. As has been pointed out many times, the linear, riverine habitat of the gharial is an extreme disadvantage with annual monsoonal flooding when the newly hatched young are especially prone to being flushed downstream out of the protected areas to their inevitable doom.

Gharial Problems

In the winter of 2007 – 08, a catastrophic die off of gharial in the Chambal pointed the finger at the heavily polluted Jamuna River which may be harbouring toxins which - through the fish food chain - cause kidney failure and fatal gout in gharial. The investigation is continuing even as we write.

The problem is that even without human interference, gharial have a hard enough time surviving in their strictly riverine habitats (gharials have never been known to occur naturally in still water lakes, reservoirs or ponds) with the heavy monsoon floods rushing down the river and flushing them down into shallow, inhospitable river stretches outside the protected areas.
 
Carrying out census surveys of endangered species like the gharial should be a routine function of the Wildlife Departments, but in most cases scant attention is paid to species other than mammalian mega-fauna like the tiger, elephant and rhino.

Going, Going…

There are a few scattered gharials in other parts of India: a small breeding population in Corbett Tiger Reserve in Uttarakhand, a few stray gharial in the Jamuna and maybe one of two left in the huge Brahmaputra river in the northeast. It can be hoped that better protection and higher awareness will change the situation for the better.
Besides India, the only other country where some gharial survive is Nepal, where over 500 head-started gharial were released and which now has only about 35 adults and about the same number of juveniles. Six nests were reported from the Rapti/Narayani River in 2006, down from 12 in 1980.

Gharial are now extinct in Pakistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar—gone, gone forever. India and Nepal are now responsible for the survival of this massive, remarkable reptile which causes no threat to humans or livestock, and remains a strong religious icon as the vehicle of Ma Ganga, the top river goddess. This top river predator is a living symbol of the health and vitality of a river ecosystem.

What Do We Do?

The world population of wild, breeding adult gharials is now down to about 180. It is now 20 times more endangered than the tiger. So what do we do? When news of the drastic decline of the gharial was relayed to the Crocodile Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union, some of its members reacted by starting the Gharial Conservation Alliance. Based at the Madras Crocodile Bank (which has had a breeding gene pool of gharial since 1979), the Alliance is attempting to galvanise all the important players into hammering out a realistic Species Recovery Plan for gharial recovery.

The poor survival percentage of the thousands of gharial that were reintroduced into our rivers at great expense of time, money and energy is now prompting a total re-examination of the head-starting programme. Perhaps the answer lies in something very basic; perhaps the gharial cannot survive in rivers that have no sheltering tributaries for them to retreat to when the monsoon floods surge down on them. Or perhaps upriver deforestation has changed the character and water flow of the rivers irreversibly and there is no future for the gharial in most of its former range.
A combination of good science, people’s participation, continuing surveys and population monitoring and judicious restocking in carefully assessed protected areas are key components of the developing Action Plan which is being drawn up with inputs from the field people with the most experience in conserving the gharial. Currently, the Madras Crocodile Bank/Gharial Conservation Alliance is carrying out a gharial telemetry project in collaboration with the Forest Departments of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh (and soon Rajasthan), which will help us answer some of the questions of gharial migration.

Here’s What Needs to be Done

To bring the gharial back from the brink of extinction yet again and to keep it safe forever, this is what the gharial conservationists say needs to be done:

• Lobby for political support for gharial and river biodiversity conservation, particularly in the three main gharial states in India: Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. The protected area and conservation concept still remains detached from development plans and the aspirations of the people living along the gharial rivers

• Total enforcement of the existing wildlife laws and protection by the forest and police departments in the tri-state National Chambal Sanctuary, as well as in the crucial Katerniaghat and Son River Sanctuaries plus the Corbett Tiger Reserve, Uttarakhand

• To increase support staff, infrastructure and equipment for patrolling, protection and gharial population status monitoring

• Formulation of management plans for each of the key protected areas for gharial, in the framework of the International Gharial Recovery Action Plan

• Annual monitoring of all surviving gharial populations

• Development of research programmes on key aspects of gharial biology such as dispersal and migration, hatchling survival and habitat requirements (in particular to survive the monsoon ‘flush’ effect)

• Continued surveys of alternative habitats for gharial reintroductions to be carried out cautiously after assessing all the habitat and negative influences and their mitigation

• Assessment of all the negative influences to gharial survival from sufficient prey base (fish) to people pressures like over-fishing, sand mining, water extraction and general disturbance of nesting areas.

• Research on river water management, fisheries, future development plans and the socio-economics of the riparian people living in and around the remaining gharial habitats.

• Development of appropriate awareness campaigns along with eco-development programmes to increase the standard of living for riparian people, as also to minimise unsustainable dependence on river resources.

• Fund-raising, international and national awareness programmes and involvement of all those with an interest in gharials, river conservation and the welfare of river people: the ultimate custodians of the gharial.

Romulus Whitaker
Chairman
Gharial Conservation Alliance

Janaki Lenin
Regional Chairman

IUCN/SSC Crocodile Specialist Group
Romulus Whitaker is the co-founder of the Madras Crocodile Bank/Centre for Herpetology. His main work revolves around gharial conservation in north India and king cobra conservation in the Western Ghats
Janaki Lenin heads the Crocodile Specialist Group for Iran and South Asia. She is a conservation writer and facilitator currently concentrating on human-animal conflict

Communicate with the authors at: janaki@gmail.com

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