Saving the Gharial
Summary
This is a report on the writer’s efforts to breed gharials, an endangered species of crocodiles, in captivity. It opens with an anecdote describing the writer’s encounter with a mother gharial in the mid-1980s. Though the mother was
guarding her eggs, she did not seem to mind when the writer collected them tobe hatched and bred in captivity in a bid to increase the dwindling gharial population.
After sharing a personal experience, the writer details the dangerous predicament in which this variety of crocodile is caught and the efforts being made by wildlife experts to extricate it from the situation.
The natural habitat of the gharial is the rivers of India, Bangladesh and Nepal. It looks different from other species of crocodile because of its long snout with narrow jaws lined with sharp teeth. The name, gharial, is derived from the Hindi word for pot, ghara. The ghara describes an appendage shaped like a pot that grows on the snout of the male gharial. This growth presses down on the nose, forcing the reptile to make a snorting sound while breathing. The male uses the snout to catch fish and the noise to attract females and to fight off rivals during courting.
While the male gharials fight for territorial rights, the females fight to secure safe nesting-places. The mother gharial makes a deep nest hole on banks of rivers and lays upto fifty eggs, covers them with sand and keeps watch from the river to safeguard them from predators like jackals, mongooses and hyenas. When the eggs are hatched, the mother extricates the babies from the sand and leads them to the river. The male, which was on stand-by, moves into help with parenting.
Gharials live in rivers and eat fish. But with rivers being dammed or diverted in name of technological development for human benefit, they have been forced to break away from their groups and to survive in precarious conditions. As a result, their numbers are diminishing at such an alarming rate that they are in danger of facing extinction.
SAVING THE GHARIAL
Understanding the Text
A.
1. an unusually long snout, slim
2. an appendage called the ‘ghara’, a noise that attracts mates and wards off rivals
3. an underwater territorial jaw-clap
4. the youngsters, then follow the mother into the water rather like ducklings
5. still waters of ponds and lakes, deep rivers, fish
B.
1.
a. A male gharial is being talked about.
b. The male gharial surges forward towards the other male who is challenging his territory. The intention is to scare the second gharial away.
c. Either the other gharial will retreat or the two males will fight with their slender snouts clashing like swords in the air till one of them prevails over the other.
2.
a. The babies of a female gharial are being referred to here. They follow their mother.
b. The young gharials went from their buried nests toward the water where their parents waited for them.
c. This was unusual because usually crocodiles are known to take hours to help their babies reach the water. The mother cannot exactly see where the babies are buried and in an attempt to tenderly carry their babies to the river, they mistakenly carry rocks, egg shells, clods of dirt and even baby turtles instead of their own youngsters. But the author notes how the gharial mother had a far more efficient way of leading her children to the river. She would just excavate the nest and move into the water while her babies would follow her trail on their own, thus reducing parental effort and ensuring a quicker result.
C.
1. Whitaker and his team were going to take the gharial’s eggs to breed the young and rear them safely in captivity and release them in protected areas when they were old enough to fend for themselves. This was to keep the young gharial safe from predators like jackals, mongooses,
hyenas and also from human interference so that their survival could be ensured because their dwindling numbers have become a cause of concern for preservers of biodiversity.
2. Whitaker and his team’s work was indeed part of a larger project called ‘Project Crocodile’. It was launched in 1974 by the Indian government with the UN’s help. The project was initiated in order to counter the rapid decline of the gharial and related species in the Indian subcontinent.
3. Whitaker and his team succeeded in breeding a large number of gharials in captivity. But their project received a setback because out of thousands of young gharials released in protected areas, only few survived for long. Threats of human interference in the form of bamboorafting and net-fishing affected the project adversely with the snouts of gharials being shut tight because of the fishing nets which eventually starved them to death. Changes in natural environment for e.g. the river eroding the sandbanks (egg-laying site) and uprooting the trees and so on had flushed the gharials out of their protected area and sometimes into the sea.
4. Whitaker is optimistic at the end of the text because he feels that the gharial is not in as much danger as it had been before. Though he acknowledged that their 30-year strategy of captive breeding had not done enough and the species still faced an uncertain future, yet he was hopeful
because he thought that people seemed to be at last ready to do what it took to save the gharial. A healthy gharial population indicates a healthy river and people are finally waking up to the need for preserving biodiversity and river ecosystems.
Understanding the Text
A.
1. an unusually long snout, slim
2. an appendage called the ‘ghara’, a noise that attracts mates and wards off rivals
3. an underwater territorial jaw-clap
4. the youngsters, then follow the mother into the water rather like ducklings
5. still waters of ponds and lakes, deep rivers, fish
B.
1.
a. A male gharial is being talked about.
b. The male gharial surges forward towards the other male who is challenging his territory. The intention is to scare the second gharial away.
c. Either the other gharial will retreat or the two males will fight with their slender snouts clashing like swords in the air till one of them prevails over the other.
2.
a. The babies of a female gharial are being referred to here. They follow their mother.
b. The young gharials went from their buried nests toward the water where their parents waited for them.
c. This was unusual because usually crocodiles are known to take hours to help their babies reach the water. The mother cannot exactly see where the babies are buried and in an attempt to tenderly carry their babies to the river, they mistakenly carry rocks, egg shells, clods of dirt and even baby turtles instead of their own youngsters. But the author notes how the gharial mother had a far more efficient way of leading her children to the river. She would just excavate the nest and move into the water while her babies would follow her trail on their own, thus reducing parental effort and ensuring a quicker result.
C.
1. Whitaker and his team were going to take the gharial’s eggs to breed the young and rear them safely in captivity and release them in protected areas when they were old enough to fend for themselves. This was to keep the young gharial safe from predators like jackals, mongooses,
hyenas and also from human interference so that their survival could be ensured because their dwindling numbers have become a cause of concern for preservers of biodiversity.
2. Whitaker and his team’s work was indeed part of a larger project called ‘Project Crocodile’. It was launched in 1974 by the Indian government with the UN’s help. The project was initiated in order to counter the rapid decline of the gharial and related species in the Indian subcontinent.
3. Whitaker and his team succeeded in breeding a large number of gharials in captivity. But their project received a setback because out of thousands of young gharials released in protected areas, only few survived for long. Threats of human interference in the form of bamboorafting and net-fishing affected the project adversely with the snouts of gharials being shut tight because of the fishing nets which eventually starved them to death. Changes in natural environment for e.g. the river eroding the sandbanks (egg-laying site) and uprooting the trees and so on had flushed the gharials out of their protected area and sometimes into the sea.
4. Whitaker is optimistic at the end of the text because he feels that the gharial is not in as much danger as it had been before. Though he acknowledged that their 30-year strategy of captive breeding had not done enough and the species still faced an uncertain future, yet he was hopeful
because he thought that people seemed to be at last ready to do what it took to save the gharial. A healthy gharial population indicates a healthy river and people are finally waking up to the need for preserving biodiversity and river ecosystems.
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