Saving the fish-eating crocodile
The gharial is the oddest crocodile you will ever see: a long, thin snout lined with more than a hundred sharp teeth, built for catching fish and nothing else. Adult males grow a bulbous knob on the snout tip, shaped like a ghara, an earthen pot, which gives the animal its name. It hunts in deep, clean, fast rivers and almost never leaves the water except to bask and nest. It poses no danger to people.
In the early 1950s about 235 gharials lived in the Narayani. Dams, sand mining, fishing nets and the loss of nesting sandbanks cut that number to only 38 wild animals by 2003. The breeding centre at Kasara was set up to break the cycle: staff collect eggs from river sandbanks each spring, hatch them in safety, and rear the young for six to nine years before releasing them. Releases have continued year after year.
Survival after release is still low, and the gharial remains critically endangered across its range in Nepal and India. But the Kasara programme has kept animals in the Narayani and Rapti, and released gharials have been recorded far downstream. Nearby, a smaller centre cares for rescued turtles, another group of river animals in trouble. Many visitors find the nursery tanks, full of tiny hatchlings, the most hopeful sight of their Chitwan trip.
