JUNE 26, 2018
Chitwan National Park
In 1978, Chitwan National Park established a captive breeding center for the gharials, one of the most off-putting reptiles on earth. Even by crocodilian standards, the gharial looks like bad news. Their size alone is unnerving. Males commonly attain a length of 10-17 feet and weigh up to 550 pounds. Females are somewhat smaller. Both sexes look equally intimidating.
Adding to the effect is a feature that distinguishes them from their cousins: a narrow and freakishly elongated snout. Its jaws open and shut with the rigidity of a movie clapboard. 110 very sharp interdigitated teeth peek out between lipless lips, creating the grimmest smile you’ll ever hope to encounter.
Other than that, the gharial’s expression gives nothing away. Especially the eyes. The jaundiced-green irises are split down the center by black razor-thin slits. The slits allow the creature to scan the shoreline for its next prey without moving its head.
If my description sounds intentionally harsh, it is. I want to underline the irony behind human-gharial relations. Affinity, based on looks, may be the main reason people are indifferent to the gharial’s survival. Man can simultaneously love and fear tigers (sumptuously striped fur, sexy stealth) or rhinos (power incarnate clad in mediaeval armor) because, well, because those predators are just plain cool. Seen any “Save the Gharial” bumper stickers on America cars lately?
Gharials are, in fact, shy. Except in very rare cases, they do not harm humans. Yes, gharials repulse us, but – unlike tigers and rhinos – they don’t kill us. Quite the opposite. It is human encroachment that has all but rendered gharials extinct.
A century ago, the gharial inhabited all the major river systems of the Indian Subcontinent. Today, its distribution has shriveled to 2% of its former range. As per the census in 2016, Nepal’s wild population is 198 (166 in Chitwan and 32 in Bardiya.) The uphill battle to save the gharial is foiled by continuing loss and fragmentation of riverine habitat, (where they bask and bury their eggs), depletion of fish resources, and entanglement in fishing nets. It is now listed as critically endangered.
Nevertheless, in spite of overwhelming odds against success, conservationists and the Nepal Army are doing their best to stabilize the gharial population, if not increase it.
The Gharial Conservation and Breeding Center – a popular tourist attraction in Chitwan – contains over a dozen concrete pools to nurture young gharials. The process begins with harvesting eggs. Every year their eggs are collected along the rivers to be hatched back at the center. The babies are reared at the Center until they reach adolescence, between six and nine years old.
Lt. Col. Lokesh and I walked down the central sidewalk that separates the pools, each basin populated by gharials segregated by age. Lokesh explained that periodically – once the reptiles reached a length of about five feet – they are removed from the hatchery and released into the Narayani-Rapti river system.
Only a few days before, the Breeding Center had released 24 gharials into the Rapti River not far from where I had mistaken a gharial for a log. Lokesh pointed toward a stack of sturdy wooden crates. “Those were what we used to transport the animals to the river.”
Members of local communities were waiting at the designated site for what was basically a handover ceremony. Breeding Center officials unloaded the crates, but it was the locals who conducted the release of the gharials into the Rapti. It may seem like an insignificant gesture, but conservationists feel strongly that the people who depend solely on the river for survival should be the ones to reintroduce the endangered species back into the river system. It instills a feeling of empathy among the locals – of ownership. Indeed, the natives have come to believe that they share the responsibility of protecting gharials which, after all, are river natives just like they are.
But what happens to the reptiles after their release? A gharial’s waterway habitat can extend as much as 125 miles. Chitwan’s rivers flow downstream about 62 miles before crossing into India. The problem is that gharials can no longer swim back to Nepal, if and when they reach India. Currents coming the other way are too strong and human-made barrages block the way. As a result, about 75% of the gharials released in Nepali become permanent Indian residents, beyond the purview of Nepali protection. And even if they remain in Nepal, depletion of fish resources and fishnet entanglements further reduce their odds for survival.
On my final morning in Chitwan, I went on a two-raft armed patrol on the Rapti River. Lt. Colonel Lokesh led the team. My hope was to see adult gharials up close. I was in the heart of one their last safe havens.
We descended an embankment and the squad fell into line to received instructions. A troop of gray langurs, perched in nearby trees, squawked and chattered and, in general, talked over the patrol’s directive.
We shoved off and glided into the Rapti. Unlike the Karnali River, the Rapti is modest in width. The southern embankment was colonized by aquatic plants and grasses, and, rising behind, dense forest. In stark contrast, the northern bank was a vast expanse of sand-and-pebble beach. A single row of chitals, one of the smallest deer reaching only three-feet high – were traversing the beach diagonally, toward the river’s edge. A peacock, in response to their approach, took wing for a few feet before settling back down behind some scrub brush.
The rowers fell into rhythmic pull and so did my thoughts.
A team of ducks paddled to one side of our raft, in deference of our advance. Waders along the shore included storks, kingfishers and hornbills. The Army’s Nature Conservation School couldn’t be more perfectly situated, I thought. Forget the slide shows: Everything outside the lecture hall is this Imax version, a 3D laboratory of nature replete with disrespectful monkeys.
Lokesh tapped me on the shoulder. Twenty feet away from us on the edge of sandbank was an adult male gharial. I knew he was male because of the unsavory protuberance at the end of his snout – a twisted mound that looked like a tumor. Nothing decorative about it. Even the gharial’s name implies that. “Gharial” comes from the Hindi word ghara, a lowly earthenware pot. And what is it purpose? Biologists have failed to agree on the function of the unseemly growth.
It may seem absurd but -- as I began photographing the creatures -- the mystery of the knot instilled in me a newfound respect for the creature. Suddenly, the animal was anything but repulsive.
Maybe it had to do with my experience the day before – having witnessed the gharials’ slow developmental stages at the Breeding Center – understanding the years it took them to reach maturity, the struggle to exist in a world over which they had no control.
We oared past perhaps a dozen grown gharials that morning, all in similar poses: parallel to the river’s edge, motionless and forever uninviting.
What was their sense of self-preservation? Surely, it had to be at least on par with a human’s. And yet it was only us, the human race, that could protect them. That’s what had befallen them in the 21st century.
Did they somehow intuit the end of their species?
One thing for sure: The military wasn’t giving up on them.
It made me proud to be a vicarious partner and witness to the determination and professionalism of the Nepal Army.
They deserve all the recognition that comes their way.
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