Gharials may have been in Okara and Head Sulemanki nearly a year ago
A gharial in the Chambal river in India. Photo from iStock for representation This story has been updated
The World Wildlife Fund-Pakistan (WWF-Pakistan) confirmed reports of gharials being present (Gavialis gangeticus) in Punjab, the country’s most populous province on May 18, 2023.
The confirmation means the crocodilian unique to the Indian subcontinent is now back in an area from which it was once extirpated.
“Following recent reports of sightings of the critically endangered Gharial (Gavialis gangeticus) reported on social media, WWF-Pakistan's wildlife team promptly visited the area in Punjab, Pakistan, to investigate further. The subsequent survey confirmed the presence of Gharials in the region, including the exciting observation of juvenile individuals after a presumed absence of three decades,” the organisation said in a statement posted on its website.
It added that it aimed to “step up conservation efforts for the Gharial to ensure that the newly discovered population not only survives but thrives”.
Local fishermen also told the WWF-Pakistan team that there had been unconfirmed sightings of gharials in Okara (near the Ravi river) and Head Sulemanki (on the Satluj river, just two kilometres from the Indian border) nearly a year ago.
The incidents were not reported at that time. But “these accounts further reinforce the significance of the recent observations,” the statement noted.
“The confirmation of the Gharial’s presence in Punjab, including the observation of both adult and juvenile individuals, is an encouraging sign. It indicates the potential survival of these remarkable reptiles in Pakistan,” Jamshed Iqbal Chaudhry, senior manager research and conservation WWF-Pakistan, was quoted as saying in the statement.
Officials from the Punjab Wildlife Department also visited the site with WWF and local non-profits and are now formulating an action policy by involving other stakeholders, as per sources.
It was on May 14, 2023, that Bilal Mustafa, a postgraduate researcher currently based at the Wildlife Conservation and Research Unit (WildCRU) in the University of Oxford, tweeted a video on microblogging site Twitter which he said had gone viral.
The video showed a couple of men, likely fishers, trying to free a thrashing gharial.
Mustafa had suggested that the animal may have come into Pakistan from India’s Punjab, where some 94 gharials were released into the Beas river in the Amritsar, Tarn Taran and Hoshiarpur districts between 2017 and 2021.
The animals were brought mostly from the Chambal basin in Madhya Pradesh.
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