Status profile - 14
Conservation Status of the Gharial in Uttar Pradesh 
Ashok Singh, Ram Lakhan Singh and D Basu

A large portion of the gharial's distribution lies within the state of Uttar Pradesh, and one of the last surviving breeding ulations of the species' was found in the Girwa river in the Distt. Bahraich. With the initiation of Government of India/UNDP/FAO Crocodile Conservation Project, it became necessary for Uttar Pradesh to embark upon a comprehensive management Pramme for gharial.

Accordingly, a Gharial Rehabilitation Project was started by the Wildlife Preservation Organisation of the UP Forest epartment in 1975. This programme has contributed to the rapid improvement in the gharial's status not only in Uttar .Pradesh but also in the neighbouring states of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. In fact, the captive-breeding programme for gharial is one of the two such successful wildlife conservation programmes in the country.

The main thrust of the Gharial Rehabilitation Project has been the `head start programme' comprising collection and incubation of eggs from the wild, rearing of the resultant hatchings in captivity and supplementation of depleted wild populations with the captive reared gharial. Two rearing stations, called Gharial Rehabilitation Centres, were established for this head start programme in the state in 1976, at Kukrail Reserved Forest near Lucknow and at Katerniaghat in West Bahraich Forest Division. The two centres together possess facilities to rear up to 800 hatchlings annually and an approximately equal number of juvenile gharial to the prescribed size for supplementation in rivers. Between the years 1975 to 1998, 10,782 eggs of gharial were acquired from the three different sources for the programme viz,. Chambal and Girwa rivers and the Gharial Breeding Enclosure at the Kukrail Centre. The contributions of each of the aforementioned sources amounted to 46.5, 36.6 and 16.9 percent of the total.

The most successful and commonly used method for incubation of eggs was to allow 90% of incubation in situ in the wild nests, and then collect and transport these to hatcheries at the Rehabilitation Centres, where sand-filled, brick cubics were used to complete the incubation. This method gave an overall mean 75.6.% incubation success for gharial eggs in the project (81.5%

 
Figure 11 - Crocodiles in Uttar Pradesh ( Zoom the Map)

in case of eggs collected from the Chambal river). In addition to gharials hatched from eggs, a few neo-nates were also collected in certain years for captive rearing.

At the Gharial Rehabilitation Centres, hatchlings are reared for one year in concrete rearing ponds of size 2 x 2 x 3m, and thereafter in larger ponds of two sizes _ 4 x 4 x 1m; or 10 x 6 x 2 m. An analysis of the age classes of gharials at the time of their disposal from the Centres shows that about 20% of gharial have been reared up to 2-3 years, 45% for 3-4 years age, 15% for 4-5 years, 3% for 1-2 years and about 4% for 5 years or more. The remaining comprise hatchlings in their first year.

At the Rehabilitation Centres, mortality was confined predominantly to hatchlings, with only rare instances of mortality in animals over one year old. Of ghariall hatchlings reared in captivity in UP, 49% survived beyond the age of one year (59.2% in the case of the Kukrail centre). The major reasons for mortality among hatchlings in certain years have been (1) A debilitating liver ailment complicated with infection of unabsorbed yolk; (2) toxicity due to accumulation of undigested fish in the stomach; and (3) a neuro-muscular disorder of unknown etiology. At the Katerniaghat centre, congenital debility and cervical deformities of hatchlings produced from eggs incubated at sub-optimal temperatures, and hypoglycemic syndrome induced by stress resulting from ineffective protection from extremes of wet, cold water conditions were causes of mass mortality in some years.

However, from the great differences in the observed survival rates of animals reared in captivity, it is evident that hatchlings too have high immunity to disease and survive well if they are congenitally robust and are reared under optimum conditions. The two main factors which have ensured high survival rates of hatchlings are the ample availability of live fish feed and adequate protection from extreme weather conditions.

Gharial hatchlings, 35-38cm at birth, grew annually by 35-40cm of the total body length, till the age of five years. Females reached a total body length of 3.0- 3.5m. in their 11th year, showing an average increase in length of 20-25cm per year between the ages of 5 and 11 years.

The gharial hatched at the Rehabilitation Centres prior to 1994 have mostly been disposed off while those hatched between 1994 and 1998 are still being reared in captivity. Of the 4,331 gharial successfully reared at the centres, to date 3495 have been released into the rivers, while another 184 transferred to zoos or other animal collections.

Captive bred gharials were first released in rivers in 1979, and thereafter more or less on an annual basis. Approximately 70% of the releases were done in five protected areas, which are under active wildlife management. The rest were experimentally reintroduced into rivers bordering or outside the protected areas, from where the species has been extirpated in the remote or recent past.

At the PHVA workshop on gharial conducted in 1995, the status of gharial populations in different rivers was scrutinized in detail. At the workshop, it was inferred that, in the context of the present knowledge of gharial population biology and provided that assumptions made regarding the composition of meta and sub-populations are correct and the nature of threats to this population do not undergo dramatic changes in the future, the Chambal river population had achieved a satisfactory level of self-sustenance. The Katerniaghat population, on the other hand, faces a grave threat of extinction, probably because of the inadequate rates of recruitment of resident adults into the population to make good the gradual loss of animals due to old age and other reasons.

Collection of wild laid eggs have been discontinued since 1992. Currently, the head start programme of UP Gharial Conservation Project is sustained by eggs laid in captivity in the breeding enclosure for gharial at Kukrail and reserves of breeding animals being reared to replace those lost through disease or old age. Because of the scaling down of the programme, selected pens are being modified and developed for rearing of other threatened aquatic wildlife. The Kukrial Gharial Rehabilitation Centre attracts over two lakh local and outstation visitors annually and continues to contribute towards raising public awareness towards conservation of the gharial.

 References Biswas

S.19670. A preliminary surveyof gharial in the Kosi River. Indian Forester 96 : 705-10.

Singh, V.B. 1978 Status of the gharial in Uttar Pradesh and its rehabilitation. J. Bombay Natural History Society 75 (3) : 668-683

Whitaker, R. and daniel, JC. 1980. The status of Indian crocodilians. J.Bombay Natural History Society 75, Supplement : 1283-1245.

IUCN, CBSG India. 1995 Report. Population and Habitat Viability Analysis Workshop for Gharial. Gealior. Eds. R.J.Rao, D.Basu, S.M.Hasan, B.B.Sharma, S.Molur, S.Walker, mimeo.