Exclusive Beas island welcomes back 15 gharials

CHANDIGARH: The second batch of 15 critically-endangered gharials was re-introduced on a mid-channel island 400 m downstream of Beas railway bridge and 5 km upstream of Rakhh-Gagdewal at 11.30 am on Wednesday. This brings the total number of gharials released on the Beas to 25, six decades after the species went extinct on the river.

The release spot is more than 75 km from the Harike barrage. The third phase of release will be conducted after February 10, and will comprise the 15 gharials, which have been bred in captivity at Chhatbir zoo. “We will release the final batch for the season in the next 10-15 days and make it 40 gharials in all. We will resume release of the next batches in the winter of 2018-2019. All the 15 gharials took 2.5 hours to finally go into the Beas river on Wednesday after they were freed from specially-designed caskets that brought them from Chhatbir. The 15 gharials stayed around the island, which is an undisturbed area of considerable size, length of more than 300 m and is broken by shallow creeks running inside,” Punjab PCCF (wildlife) Dr Kuldip Kumar told TOI.

The first two phases of re-introduction involved 25 gharials brought from the Morena captive breeding centre in

Madhya Pradesh

. The Punjab government has been promised a 100 gharials for release on the Beas by breeding centres in

Kukrail

(Uttar Pradesh) and Morena. “The gharials from Morena were first trained to swim against water currents and fed on live fish at the zoo. The health status of gharials was observed by the veterinary wing and were found fit for release. Gharials were scientifically managed at the zoo and transported in dedicated containers to the Beas river. The zoo has actively participated in the first-of-its-kind reintroduction-cum-conservation programme of the Punjab government. After successful reintroduction of 10 gharials on December 25, 2017, at Rakhh-Gagdewal, the forests and wildlife preservation department decided to go for release of gharials at regular intervals until healthy colonies of gharials are established on the Beas river, which was once a flourishing habitat for this species,” Chhatbir field director M Sudhagar told TOI.

The

gharial

has been decimated in the wilderness of the Indian sub-continent and less than 2,000 survive in freedom of which no more than 200 are breeding-sized adults. The Gurdaspur Gazetteer of 1914 mentions the presence of gharial, otter and dolphin in the Beas, Ravi and their flood plains but by the 1960s the gharial was hurtling towards extinction in Punjab. One record of the gharial from Punjab is the hunting trophy that hangs in the Villa Buena Vista of the erstwhile Kapurthala royal, Brig Sukhjit Singh (MVC). This gharial specimen, measuring 15 feet 10 inches from snout to tail tip, was shot on January 13, 1913, by his father, the late Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala, on the Bien rivulet with a single bullet of the .375 Magnum Holland & Holland double-barrel rifle.