‘Govt laxity behind gharial deaths’

Efforts to save dying gharials in the National Chambal Sanctuary are being hampered by insufficient data and confusing toxicological results, international crocodile experts say, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Mar 6, 2008, 01:35:07 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Efforts to save dying gharials in the National Chambal Sanctuary are being hampered by insufficient data and confusing toxicological results, international crocodile experts have said in their report to the government.

Over 110 gharials of the 182 in the sanctuary have died till Tuesday and the remaining infected ones will also die shortly in the absence of suitable medication, Ravi Singh head of World Wildlife Fund (WWF), India, said. What is worse is that the government does not have the number of infected gharials in the 40-km killer stretch of the sanctuary.

Investigations in January and February by Crocodile Special Group of the World Conservation Union, an internationally recognised body on wildlife conservation, exposed how gharials had been allowed to die since November when the first death was reported.

An indication of the looming danger to gharials would have been exposed had the state governments of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh recorded the sudden disappearance of carnivorous turtles from the Chambal.

“Death of wild turtles in the area was not documented. A single, apparently ill, soft-shell turtle was observed by a river patrol during field studies but was not collected for examination,” the investigation involving five international crocodile experts said.

Late reaction from government agencies and non-professional approach has resulted in important data being lost. “Information on the first gharials to die, which is unavailable, would have been informative in ascertaining any trends between the first animals affected and those that died later,” the report said.

The experts have also cautioned that analysis of the ‘limited’ tissues should be relevant and justified. “Many samples collected prior to our arrival were collected by various laboratories without any apparent rationale or means of efficiently retrieving test results,” the report said.

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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