KATHMANDU — The start of 2024 has brought some good news, tempered with warnings, for Nepal’s critically endangered gharials, the fish-eating crocodiles with the comically bulbous snouts. Officials at Chitwan National Park, the country’s prime habitat for gharials (Gavialis gangeticus), one of two crocodile species found in Nepal, say their population increased by around 11% compared to the previous year. Park officials counted 265 individual gharials in the Rapti and Narayani rivers that flow through Chitwan, up from 239 the previous year. “This is indeed encouraging news as we concentrate our efforts towards saving the crocodiles,” said Ashish Bashyal, a researcher with the organization Biodiversity Conservancy Nepal. “While it is nice to celebrate the achievement, we must not forget that the gains could be temporary and the population could decline at any time if threats are not addressed in time.” Bashyal echoed those concerns in a recently published study in the journal Reptiles & Amphibians, which documents the distribution of the crocodiles throughout Chitwan National Park. The study, which looked at gharial populations between 2017 and 2022, found that although the number of the crocodiles increased during the period, their population may not be evenly distributed, pointing to various factors that may be deterring them from choosing a certain habitat even when it’s the kind of habitat in which they would thrive. A female gharial guards a creche of hatchlings in Nepal. Image courtesy of Phoebe Griffith/ZSL. “We conducted annual winter population surveys for gharial in Chitwan between 2017 and…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The post Nepal’s gharial population rises, but threats to the crocs persist appeared first on EnviroLink Network.