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CROCODOPOLIS world of crocodilians TM SCIENCE · CULTURE · INDUSTRY · NEWS · COMMUNICATION · CONSERVATION
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SCIENCE
February 13, 2007
GHARIAL
CONSERVATION ALLIANCE
(Formerly known as Gharial Multi-Task Force)
NEWSLETTER Number One/ September 2006
Dear
All,
Things
are rolling along and it's time to look at where we are since the France
meeting:
1.
Gavialis website:
Saravanakumar
(of Ecotone, Chennai, India) and his team are putting the site together
(voluntarily) with the material somewhat belatedly corrected and
returned to them by us. Next week the site will hopefully go online for
password holders (GMTF members) to access, add to, comment on, before
putting it into the public domain.
2.
Gharial Conservation Coordinator (India):
The
position has been widely advertised in India (the post demands knowledge
of Hindi) and a few applications received. R.J. Rao, of Jiwaji
University in Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh, close to the Chambal River) and
Goutam Narayan at Ecosystems-India (Assam, close to the Brahmaputra
River) have kindly offered office space for the Coordinator who will
first be briefed by us at Madras Crocodile Bank. Funds for the post have
been raised by the Hugh Quinn/Don Boyer initiative: Cleveland Metro Park
Zoo's and San Diego Zoo's 'Gharial Conservation Fund' (6 months salary
and expenses which comes to US$3,600) and by a US$2600 donation from
Rene Hedegaard (Danish Croc Zoo) and funds raised by Terry Cullen
(Cullen Vivarium)(for another 6 months salary and expenses = US$3,600).
A hearty thanks to them!
Colin
Stevenson has kindly offered to be Gharial Conservation Coordinator for
Europe along with Rene Hedegaard and this offer is accepted with
alacrity. At present the job mainly entails the facilitation and
coordination of fund-raising and awareness-raising.
3.
GMTF Base:
The
Trustees of the Madras Crocodile Bank have offered the Croc Bank as the
base for the GMTF (Croc Bank Curator Nikhil is the GMTF Chairman, so it
makes a lot of sense) and being a charitable Trust, have agreed to
receive and disburse funds received via GMTF for gharial conservation
work. (Round of applause)
4.
European Zoo and Other inputs:
Dr.
Ivan Rehak, Prague Zoo and Chairman of EAZA (European Association of
Zoos and Aquaria) ARTAG (Amphibian and Reptile Taxon Advisory Group)
writes: "I see a very good chance in significant raising of general
attention to the problem as well as the possibility to gain some
financial sources for gharial conservation by organizing an EAZA
crocodile conservation campaign in which gharials will have an important
position. So, I am going to do the first steps to realize this idea, to
form a working group and to prepare the EAZA ARTAG proposal for this
campaign. Of course, we will need a massive support by CSG, GMTF, TTF
etc. in providing conservation information and materials (photos etc.) -
I will provide you with more details soon." We look forward to
leaning on this potentially tremendous source of support for the gharial.
Ralf
Sommerlad wrote an article on the plight of the gharial (based on
Janaki's circulated article) for the ZGAP (Zoological Society for
Conservation of Species and Populations - www.zgap.de)
in Germany and reports that ZGAP Chairman, Roland Wirth will open their
bank account for tax deductible donations for gharial conservation. And
the momentum grows!
Ralf
tops this by writing about his offer from Reptile Expo organiser Alfried
Paul ( www.terraxotica.de).
Mr. Paul is willing to donate funds for gharial conservation as well as
collect funds at the reptile expos. The funds will be transferred to the
ZGAP (see above) tax-deductable bank account in Germany. This is
excellent news and another way to spread the word amongst
herpetoculturists who are generally transfixed by the gharial (some
might say the sexiest of all the crocodilians) and who can help a lot.
Nick
Baker, BBC natural history television presenter (Nick Baker's Weird
Animals) of the UK, has very kindly given us permission to use his
excellent gharial pictures (in a non-profit capacity), taken last
February at Katerniaghat, in North India. The pictures you might have
seen of adult gharial with fishnet tangled around their jaws are his.
5.
From across the pond:
In
addition to the Cleveland Metro Parks Zoo/San Diego Zoo Gharial
Conservation Fund and Terry Cullen's good work, John Brueggen recently
wrote to say that the St. Augustine Alligator Farm in Florida is
donating US$500 for gharial conservation work. One real nice thing about
$ donations is that when converted X 45 it adds up to a lot of rupees
that go far here. Muchas Gracias from GMTF to John Brueggen and David
Drysdale.
6.
Uplisting the gharial from Endangered to Critically Endangered:
Uplisting
the gharial in the Red Data Book has proved to be a long-winded affair
but light is at the end of the tunnel. Thanks to inputs from the gharial
field workers in North India, Nepal and Bhutan plus the guidance (and
sometimes blatantly professorial attitude) of Perran Ross and
(milder-mannered) John Thorbjarnarson, the final draft will soon be sent
to the IUCN. It seems very likely that the uplisting proposal will go
through. It is hoped that this will motivate/increase efforts to protect
the gharial and its riverince habitat. The sad part of this exercise was
learning that there are less than 200 adult gharial left in the wild,
less than 80 are breeding females and there are possibly less than 20
adult males in existence. The rest of the ‘adults’ are in fragmented
groups (or individuals) where no breeding takes place, a number of which
are immature males (the size of adult females but indistinguishable till
they grow gharas).
7.
GMTF Core Group:
At
the wise suggestion of Ralf Sommerlad with his deep experience of
operating the Tomistoma Task Force, GMTF is forming a Core Group within
India for rapid decision making on courses of action, priority
disbursement of funding and other aspects of gharial conservation
related activities. Using the GMTF members as an advisory body, the Core
Group will decide how funds will be spent, based on project proposals
submitted by GMTF members in the range states/countries.
8.
Gharial Conservation Work, 2006-07:
While
only one proposal has been seen, this coming winter's gharial
conservation efforts will probably focus on status surveys, surveys for
potential gharial areas, education/awareness.
An
effort is being made to involve researchers on other riverine taxa to
collaborate with the gharial surveys and other conservation activities
(see below).
The
need is felt to do a brief training workshop on gharial survey
methodology, probably in late November. R.J. Rao of Jiwaji University in
Gwalior has tentatively offered to host the Workshop, the details of
which are being developed but which will consist of one day of briefing
in the class room and one day of survey on the Chambal River.
The
major lobbying to be done now is to make sure the State Forest
Departments 'buy in' to supporting the survey activities so that
precious, donated conservation funds can go to more specific work not
normally supported by the state machinery. More on this soon.
CSG
Regional Chairman, B.C.Choudhury is also at the organizational helm for
the Workshop and surveys, urging the Chief Wildlife Wardens of the
three
main Indian gharial states (Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan) to
participate and to commit funds and personnel to the coming winter's
gharial surveys.
9.
Agencies and individuals on board so far for Gharial Conservation Work,
2006-07
(in
addition to the existing field workers whom work at least part time on
gharial - R.K. Sharma, D. Basu, R.J. Rao (and students), Harry Andrews
(and team), L.A.K. Singh):
Asad
Rahmani, Director, Bombay Natural History Society(BNHS)writes - "I
will be happy to work closely with you to do advocacy for gharial and
the entire river systems of India. We are appointing an advocacy officer
for the Important Bird Areas programme. Fortunately, we have identified
a good person. We also want another person for general advocacy work of
the BNHS. Both will be based in Delhi. I will be very happy to take up
advocacy work for Gharial-River systems."
Ravi
Singh, Secretary General and CEO, WWF-India writes: "Your email
reflects some of my own concerns. This is an initiative that I would be
keen for us to participate and much of what you write has relevance for
our river systems work. Gharials are slipping back and in many of the
northern areas, sightings have reduced. While I reply to your questions
in the text of your email, consider this as a positive response and
recommend that we meet up in person
to outline the plans for the future."
Firoz
Ahmed of the NGO Aarnyak (www.aaranyak.org)
in Assam and whom has been working on fresh-water turtles, writes –
“A gharial survey has been in the plan. I discussed about this earlier
with BC Choudhury too. And yes, I would love to do some extra work while
doing the turtle survey. However, we need to work out a detailed plan
later as this additional work will eat up time and energy of our team.
We will talk more on this and see how this best fits.”
Wakid
Abdul (also with Aaranyak) did a river dolphin survey on the Brahmaputra
River last winter and is now doing a more focused study around a couple
of tributaries (Kulsi and Subansiri) and is interested in combining his
surveys with gharial survey work.
Anwaruddin
Choudhury, Hon. Chief Executive, The Assam Company, who carried out the
most recent gharial surveys on the the Brahmaputra has agreed to be on
board to plan and execute surveys in the coming winter.
Gyan
Sarin of the Corbett Foundation (the Ramganga River has a small but
important gharial population) writes - "The Corbett Foundation
would be pleased to undertake an estimation survey of Gharial
populations in Corbett Tiger Reserve. However, we would need your help
in securing the necessary permissions. Could the survey be done under
the aegis of The Madras Crocodile Bank with The Corbett Foundation as
your local partner?"
10.
Media/Publicity/Awareness/Education:
Firoz
Ahmed in Assam writes - "In response to your appeal to initiate a
media campaign for conservation of gharial, I had a discussion with Dr.
Goutam Narayan (Ecosystems-India) and agreed to take the voluntary
responsibilities by both of us. The Division of Herpetology, Aaranyak
and Ecosystems-India will jointly take this up in future."
Sally
Walker of Zoo Outreach Organization in Coimbatore, South India has
offered to revamp education kits on the gharial and emphasizes the need
to target the adult audience including Forest Department officials,
especially at Wildlife Week in the first week of October.
Other
GMTF(India) members who have signed on for the publicity campaign are:
Rakesh Vyas of Hadoti Naturalists Society in Kota, Rajasthan and Kaushik
Deuti of the Zoological Survey of India, Calcutta.
A
'media packet' of bullet points of gharial information and photos needs
to be put together from existing material and circulated for use in
India and abroad; Nikhil is working on this, with Wildlife Week in
October in mind.
Bittu
Sahgal and his team in Sanctuary Asia magazine are fully on board with
the gharial campaign and will carry an appear and update in the next
issue of the magazine.
11.
Clarification of GMTF's relationship with CSG:
Grahame
Webb, CSG Chairman writes - "Individual members of your Task Force
can clearly indicate in their credentials that they are members of the
CSG, but it needs to be 100% clear that this task force is not a CSG TF,
is thus not under the umbrella of the SSC or indeed the IUCN and neither
are responsible for its successes or failures." Please note and
abide by this, thanks.
12.
Gharial Conservation Work outside of India:
Nepal
is the only other country where we know gharial exist in the wild (an
estimated 35 adults, with 6 nests counted this year in Chitawan--the
only breeding population). CSG Regional Vice-Chairman, Tirtha Maskey
will coordinate plans to survey the main gharial habitats this winter,
resources permitting. Support from WWF-Nepal and the King Mahendra Trust
would be welcome as would support from Luc Fougeirol and Samuel Martin
of La Ferme aux Crocodiles in France, our fantastic hosts for the CSG
meeting who have had a long history of gharial conservation work in
Nepal.
Bhutan
has some small but potentially viable habitats for gharial, all
bordering India. The only one we know anything about is the Manas River
and it would be good if the WWF programme in Bhutan and the Government
could support surveys in the Manas River and other habitats for possible
reintroduction (in all cases just a few kilometers of suitable habitat).
Pakistan
has a WWF funded wetlands project and GMTF Pakistan members (Abdul Aleem
Choudhury, Richard Garstang, Ahmad Khan and Masood Arshad) now need to
carry out surveys (along with ongoing river dolphin and other surveys)
for any stray gharial that may still survive in Pakistan, report the
main reasons for its extinction and suggest ways to mitigate these
factors. Right now a major goal should be to carry out habitat
suitability assessments in former gharial habitats for possible
reintroductions.
Bangladesh
has a few possible locations where gharial could survive if local
attitudes could be changed, fishing practices altered and if rivers
remained stable. However, even if reintroduced, long term survival of
the gharial in the wild in Bangladesh at this time seems unlikely.
Myanmar
had gharial up to the early part of the 20th Century but
there have been no reports since. As far out as it sounds, it might just
be worthwhile to shortlist potential gharial habitat to carry out
assessment surveys for possible reintroduction sites. We are opening
contact with Burmese scientists working on saltwater crocodiles there.
NOTE
FROM THE FIELD:
We
just heard from Mr. Ramesh Pandey, Wildlife Warden at Katerniaghat
Sanctuary on the Girwa River in northern Uttar Pradesh, the second
largest gharial breeding population remaining. He reports that thanks to
increased surveillance a very high percentage of gharial hatchlings
resulted from the 18 nests found along the 5 kilometer river stretch
that is home to most of the gharial there. In previous years the eggs
had been collected and consumed by local tribals, pointing to a need for
education and people’s participation.
GMTF
members are welcome to send suggestions for aware and fund-raising,
criticisms and observations on how to do this whole program of
conservation/education/research toward gharial recovery, and
corrections, if we have made any goofups in this hastily put together
update.
RW,NW,JL GMTF India
Copyright © 2006 Gharial Multi-Task Force.
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