11
Feb 2009 - Chitwan, Nepal – Fourteen gharials
fitted with radio tags have been released
into the Rapti River in Nepal in an attempt
to identify the reasons for the alarming
decline in population of this critically
endangered member of the crocodile family.
The tagging, carried
out by Nepal’s Department of National Parks
and Wildlife Conservation in collaboration
with WWF-Nepal, is also intended to study
the movement pattern of the gharials, to
assess its survival rate and find out about
its preferred habitat in Nepal.
The gharial, which mostly
inhabits deep, fast-flowing rivers, is characterized
by its long and slender snout whose fragile
jaws render it incapable of devouring any
large animal including human beings. Its
name derives from the protruberance at the
end of the adult male’s snout that resembles
a Ghara, an earthen pot common to India
and Nepal.
The gharial is the first
crocodilian species to be re-categorized
as Critically Endangered on the 2007 IUCN
Red List. With an inferred population of
5,000 to 10,000 in the 1940s, its numbers
plummeted due to organized hunting for skin
in the 1950s and 1960s, which led to a scattered
and isolated population in India, Nepal,
Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Although hunting is
no longer a threat, the construction of
dams, barrages, irrigation canals, sand-mining
and riverside agriculture have all resulted
in the irreversible loss of habitat for
the gharial. Between 1981-2008, 691 gharials
were released in the Narayani, Rapti, Karnali,
Babai, Koshi and Kali Gandaki rivers but
numbers continue to dwindle. A 2008 survey
found just 81 individuals in the various
rivers of Nepal, the number probably boosted
by the release of captive-bred gharials.
The gharial is now considered
to be confined to the river systems of the
Brahmaputra (India and Bhutan), the Indus
(Pakistan), the Ganges (India and Nepal),
and the Mahanadi (India), with small populations
in the Kaladan and the Irrawady in Myanmar.
The 14 gharials released
into the River Rapti this week had transmitters
attached to the scutes on their tails and
each gharial has been given a different
number and radio frequency. They will be
monitored by Radio Frequency Identification
(RFID) technology by a team from Chitwan
National Park.
WWF's Country Representative
to Nepal, Anil Manandhar, said: “The study
will help diagnose the causes of decline
in the gharial population. It will also
help us better understand the gharial’s
habitat use, knowledge that is crucial for
saving the most threatened crocodile in
the world.”
Sarala Khaling, regional
co-ordinator of the Critical Ecosystem Partnership
Fund which has jointly funded the project
with WWF, said: “Although conservation efforts
such as the tagging and release of gharials
are important steps in saving the species,
a lot more is needed to ensure its long-term
survival.
“Integrated efforts
that include captive breeding, research
and monitoring, and especially safeguarding
gharial habitat and prey, are urgently needed.”
The monitoring of the
released gharials will be helpful in formulating
a long term conservation action plan to
save them. “The water quality of Nepalese
rivers is better suited for the gharial’s
survival,” said Dr Antoine Cadi of the French
NGO Awely which helped the team from Chitwan
National Park to fit the gharials with radio
transmitters. “If they are not saved in
Nepal, they will be closer to extinction.”
+ More
Putin petitioned over
Siberian power station
11 Feb 2009 - Moscow,
Russia - A petition jointly organised by
WWF-Russia and signed by more than 8,000
people was handed in to Russian Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin this week against the construction
of a hydro-electric power station in Siberia
that would threaten the indigenous population
as well as the local ecosystem.
The construction project,
in the Evenk municipal district, could drive
as many as 2,000 Evenki out of their homes
and deer-herding pasture lands and, according
to the evaluation data, one million hectares
of unique larch forest would be flooded.
These forests are almost
unaffected by human agricultural activity
and so are very important for biological
diversity conservation and ecological balance
maintenance, not only in Russia but for
the whole planet. They play a crucial role
in carbon balance maintenance and global
climate change control.
The petition was handed
in by WWF-Russia, Greenpeace-Russia, the
Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples
of the North as well as other non-governmental
organizations. In 1988 the Soviet Union
cancelled plans to construct a giant dam
at the same site after Mikhail Gorbachev
questioned the policy of building giant
hydro-power stations.
“The building of the
Turukhansk (now Evenk) Hydropower Station
was rejected at the end of the 80s because
of the results of serious environmental
and economic examinations,” said Mikhail
Kreindlin of Greenpeace-Russia. “The revival
of this project will mean a return to the
most dreadful times in the ex-USSR administrative
command system.”
Such a large hydro-technical
construction could cause irreversible changes
to the environment of an area much greater
than the construction zone itself. One of
the three radioactive underground nuclear
explosion areas in the flood plain of Tunguska
would certainly be flooded as a result of
the construction.
