Assam to breed gharials to boost their numbers

Calcutta News.Net
Wednesday 21st November, 2007

With only 189 gharials left in the wild in India and Nepal, conservationists are stepping in. A captive breeding programme is to be launched for the crocodile-like reptile in the Manas national park of Assam.

The Bodo Territorial Council (BTC), which administers four districts in lower Assam, is planning the project, a senior BTC official said. This is the first time gharials (Gavialis gangeticus) will be bred in captivity in Assam.

The decision came following the rescue of a gharial from fishermen's nets in the Manas river last week near Manikpur village, about 155 km from here.

The reptile was shifted to Mathanguri deep inside the park and is being kept in an artificial pond there for the time being.

'We first thought of releasing it back into the wild, but after consultations, we have come up with the idea of captive breeding,' said Khampa Borgoyari, deputy chief of BTC.

'We will search for her partner once the groundwork is ready for the breeding programme after consultations with experts,' Khampa told IANS on phone from Kokrajhar.

A team of experts comprising senior park officials and biologists from Assam will visit Phuntsholing in Bhutan to consult experts there who have captive bred gharials in the past.

The Brahmaputra river, which flows through Assam and pours into the Bay of Bengal, was once home to hundreds of these reptiles.

Habitat destruction due to rampant sand mining and pollution, human activities close to their habitat and poaching have led to a drastic fall in the population of the reptiles in Assam and the rest of India.

'Earlier we used to frequently sight gharials in the rivers here but now sightings have become very rare,' a forest official said.

'In the last 30-35 years, there have been only six to eight officially recorded sightings. All of them were in Assam's southern districts, including the region where the animal was recently rescued,' said P.C. Bhattacharjee, a senior zoologist in Guwahati University.

Assam's chief conservator of forest (wildlife) B.S. Bonal said a detailed report on the rescue of the gharial is awaited. Before starting the captive breeding project, permission has to be taken from the central and state governments.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) 2007 'red list' of threatened species, there are only about 189 mature adults left in the wild, mostly confined to India, with Nepal being the other range country. They have become almost extinct in Bangladesh.

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