Gharial: India
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Status
As of 2025
Sandeep Rai, June 17, 2025: The Times of India
Before dams, dredgers, and fishing nets dominated India’s rivers, long-snouted gharials ruled their waters. Fossil records date their lineage back millions of years, and historical reports from the 19th and early 20th centuries speak of abundant gharials in the Ganga, Brahmaputra, Mahanadi, Indus and Irrawaddy river systems. By the 1940s, their population was estimated to be between 5,000-10,000 individuals.
But the mid-20th century marked the beginning of a steep decline. According to a report recently released by WWF India on the gharial reintroduction programme, unregulated sand mining, poaching for skins, nest destruction, and the damming of rivers for irrigation fragmented and degraded their habitat. By the early 1970s, gharials had vanished from over 98% of their historic range.
‘Head-Starting’ Strategy
In the winter of 1975, the Centre, FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) and UNDP (United Nation Development Programme) jointly launched one of the most ambitious wildlife conservation programmes: The Crocodile Conservation Project. The goal was clear — pull the shy, slender-snouted gharial (Gavialis gangeticus) back from the brink of extinction with other crocodilian species. During this project, 16 rehabilitation centres and many crocodile sanctuaries were declared. National Chambal Sanctuary, Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary, Satkosia Gorge Wildlife Sanctuary, Son Gharial Sanctuary, Ken Gharial Sanctuary were then established.
Fifty years later, despite decades of captive breeding, reintroductions, head-start programmes and riverine sanctuary protections, the wild population of adult gharials stands at just around 650 today (IUCN Red List for Critically Endangered Species). Of these, over 550 are confined to a single protected stretch of river — the National Chambal Sanctuary. The rest, scattered across fragile outposts like the Ganga, Gandak, and Son rivers, are hanging by a thread.
“The central idea of the 1975 strategy was ‘head-starting’ — collecting gharial eggs, hatching them in captivity, rearing juveniles to a safer size, and releasing them into protected rivers,” says B C Choudhary, wildlife biologist and senior adviser and consultant, Wildlife Institute of India. “By all accounts, it was a pioneering strategy. It brought gharials back to the National Chambal Sanctuary (NCS), where early reintroductions led to some successful breeding. Over time, the strategy expanded to other rivers.”
Low Hatchling Survival Rate
Monitoring data from the Gharial Ecology Project (GEP) shows that hatchling survival post-monsoon remains dismally low — there has been up to 90% mortality in many years. According to experts, captive rearing may delay extinction, not replace habitat. And that’s where the system faltered. In 2007-08, 111 adult and sub-adult gharials died in a span of weeks in the Chambal river. Necropsies suggested kidney failure, likely due to toxic pollutants. It was a devastating blow to a recovering population — and a moment of reckoning for Indian conservation. That same year, IUCN escalated the gharial’s threat status from endangered to critically endangered. The message was clear: breeding centres alone weren’t enough.
Bringing Back Science
In response, the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust launched the Gharial Ecology Project (GEP) in 2008 to bring science back into the field. Through tagging, telemetry, and long-term monitoring, the project has since documented not just population trends but the precise ways gharials interact with their habitats — and the multiple threats stacked against them. Between 2009 and 2019 alone, WWF-India and UP’s forest department released 788 captivereared gharials into the Ganga at the State Animal Barahsingha Sanctuary. But results were mixed. Most head-started gharials did not survive long enough to breed. Those that did were facing shrinking habitats, deadly fishing nets and disappearing sandbanks due to extensive riverbed cultivation.
Despite the “successes”, the central paradox remains: how can a conservation programme this long-running and multiinstitutional still yield just 650 adult gharials?
Last Stronghold
The Chambal river remains the gharial’s last real stronghold, hosting much of the wild population, but an abysmally low survival rate poses a constant challenge for the species. Upstream stretches like Palighat and Nadigaon are losing nesting sites to rampant sand mining. Illegal fishing nets continue to snare both adults and hatchlings. In Jan 2024, two radio-tagged gharials died in such nets within weeks of release.
In recent years, gharial conservation has ventured into new frontiers. In 2021, a large male was translocated from Chambal to the Son Gharial Sanctuary, resulting in successful nesting — a historic first for the region. Another male was moved early 2025, with breeding expected later this year. While in the Ganga, at State Animal Barasingha Sanctuary, there are more than 20 adult females waiting for male translocation by the UP forest department.
As India enters the second half of its gharial conservation journey, one lesson stands out: saving the species requires saving the river. Experts say the clock is ticking and policymakers must act.
“Captive breeding and reintroductions, though important, serve as mere band-aids on a much deeper wound,” says Rajeev Chauhan, secretary, Society for Conservation of Nature and former member Uttar Pradesh Biodiversity Board. “Without flow regulation reforms, fishing regulations and sand mining crackdowns, no number of hatchlings released into the wild will sustain populations.”
“Gharial conservation, moving forward, must refocus on the integrity of river habitats, particularly open, free flowing mainstream channels free of dams, barrages, and other impediments, with minimal water extraction for irrigation, drinking water, etc, and with very limited sand removal,” says Jeffery Lang, professor emeritus, University of North Dakota and principal investigator, Gharial Ecology Project in India. “It involves protection of the existing sand banks and maintenance of natural water regime.”
Lang says head-starting of gharial was probably important decades ago, when total numbers were “dangerously low, but now, in most stable systems, such as Chambal, ChitwanGandak, Katerniaghat, and Corbett, head-starting is probably minimally effective in terms of increasing or stabilising population numbers. More emphasis needs to be placed on protecting riverside habitats, as well as the rivers themselves, from resource extraction and watershed pollution.”
The Way Forward
Gharial re-introduction expert Sanjeev Kumar Yadav says: “To develop a comprehensive sitespecific conservation plan for the species, we need to assess current population status as well as emerging threats along the Gharial ranges. In addition, genetic mixing is crucial in reintroduction programmes to lessen the risk of inbreeding.”
Fifty years ago, the gharial was nearly extinct. Today, it’s still here — but barely. That alone is worth acknowledging. But survival is not recovery, say experts. Anuradha Vemuri, chief wildlife warden of UP, the state that houses 90% of gharials in the country, admits the challenges. “It is true that only one out of 100 hatchlings is able to make it to maturity. Illegal and extensive fishing in rivers severely damages the nests of gharials. But our efforts are on. The Centre has also released gharials in natural habitats found in other states like Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand.”
Around 264 gharials from the Kukrail-based centre have also been sent, for educational purposes, to various centres such as Lucknow zoo, Madras Crocodile Bank and countries like Bhutan, USA, Japan and Pakistan, she adds. “This initiative has helped spread awareness regarding this indigenous species at the global level.”
Despite the effort, at 650 adults, the gharial’s fate remains precarious. It is a species living on borrowed time, buffered only by the passion of a few scientists, forest officials and riverside communities in the country.
If the next 50 years are to be more successful than the last, India will need to protect not just a species, but an entire ecosystem. Because, in the end, the gharial’s story is not just about saving a crocodile. It’s about whether India can still save its rivers.
