Where to, croc?
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Croc can't go on | Tears for the crocodile | Pyrrhic victory | Where to live? | Lost manhood | Where to croc? |
WILDLIFE officials say the population of wild adult gharials is 180, which is probably an overestimate, with fewer than 20 adult males. Gharials are now 20 times more endangered than tigers, Whitaker says. When news of the drastic decline of the gharial was relayed to the Crocodile Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union some of its members reacted by starting the Gharial Multi-Task Force.
The crocodile is presently categorised as endangered, but conservationists fear that soon they will be critically endangered. "Because of the grave threat to the survival of the gharial it is necessary that we relist it as critically endangered,' says Whitaker.
"Apart from a period in the early phases of the Chambal project, when population increases created the false impression in some quarters that its survival had been secured, the status of the gharial will perhaps forever swing between critically endangered and