Bhitarkanika National Park in Odisha has become the largest habitat of the endangered estuarine crocodiles in India with a record 101 nesting sites spotted in it recently. The nests are usually made on high ground which will not be inundated during high tide or flood waters in the rainy season and where it can get direct sunlight. A female crocodile lays 50-60 eggs in a nest. Out of 500 eggs, only one crocodile turns adult. At least 1698 crocodiles, including albino species, were counted this year along the water bodies of the Mahanadi delta region, while the figure recorded last year was 1682.
“Gori, the 44-year-old albino crocodile of Bhitarkanika, resides in a pen in the park. But we have also sighted around 12 albino crocodiles and four giant crocodiles more than 20 feet in the water bodies of Bhitarkanika during the reptile census,” said Sudhakar Kar, a noted herpetologist and former crocodile research officer of the state forest and wildlife department, who led the 20 team members in the reptile census work.
Kar said the increase in population was primarily due to the far-sighted measures of the government. “In 1975, the Union Ministry of Forest and Environment, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme, had started a crocodile breeding and rearing project in Dangamala within the Bhitarkanika Park. Thanks to the success of the project, the crocodile population started increasing in the creeks, river and other water bodies of the park and its nearby areas. Nine years back, the Guinness Book of World Records recorded a 23-foot-long saltwater crocodile in Bhitarkanika as the largest crocodile in the world.”
The three species of crocodilians—saltwater, Mugger and Gharial— breeding programmes had been started in 1975 in 34 places in West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other states in India and Nepal. But the saltwater crocodile conservation programme in Bhitarkanika is the most successful one, as in 1975, Bhitarkanika was the home of only 96 crocodiles, Kar said.
Credit : Down To Earth
Picture Credit : Google
