A national body for gharials on the anvil.

A national body on the lines of National Tiger Conservation Authority to protect critically endangered gharials for the country in on the anvil.

Updated on: Jan 23, 2011, 19:42:07 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A national body on the lines of National Tiger Conservation Authority to protect critically endangered gharials for the country in on the anvil.

The Environment ministry on Monday will inform the Standing Committee of the National Wildlife Board of its intention to set up National Gharial Conservation Authority for providing a holistic conservation module for gharials in rivers of Girwa, Son, Ken, Ramganga, Ghagra, Chambal, Ghandak and Brahmaputra.

Gharials are found mostly in Chambal river ecosystem in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, apart from some parts of Nepal. Only a few thousands of them survive owing to water pollution and habitat loss. Several gharials have died a few years ago because of water contamination from river Yamuna into Chambal, its tributary.

In a bid to ensure better coordination for their protection, the ministry has already constituted National Tri-State Chambal Sanctuary Management and Coordination Committee with Director World Wide Fund for nature (WWF) as national coordinator.

The committee is a prelude to constitution of the authority having representatives of the states including NGOs and local representatives.

One of the key roles of the committee will be guide river authorities to ensure sufficient flow of water in Chambal and other river streams crucial for improving gharial habitat. It will also train local forest officials in providing proper basking and nesting space for gharials during breeding season --- January to July.

The ministry has also asked the committee to formulate recovery plan for gharials to be implemented in the three states. With this, the Centre will provide more money for gharial conservation, officials said.

The standing committee is also expected to consider a proposal to include Jerdon Courser, one of the world’s rarest birds found in Andhra Pradesh in 1986, in the national programme for recovery of endangered species. The Bombay Natural History Society has prepared a recovery plan for the bird.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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