Gharial seen in Pakistan’s Punjab after 3 decades; it likely crossed over from India

The Fact News Service

Chandigarh, May 15

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, a crocodilian unique to the Indian subcontinent.

“A gharial is seen (for the) first time in Pakistan after three decades. It was thought to be extinct. A video is viral about fishermen getting it rid from a net. It’s critically endangered according to the IUCN-SSC Red List,” Mustafa wrote.

“A possibility is it has come from India during floods last year according to locals and stayed there in the Satluj river. They said there are almost 10 individuals but the location has not still (been) confirmed. India has reintroduced the gharial in the Harike wetland which is 50 km from the border,” Mustafa added.

The Harike wetland is where the Beas and the Satluj, two of the three eastern rivers of the Indus river system and whose waters are allotted to India according to the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, meet.

Between 2017 and 2021, some 94 gharials were released into the Beas river in the Amritsar, Tarn Taran Sahib and Hoshiarpur districts under three phases of the Punjab (India) government’s programme to bring back the species to its rivers.

The animals were brought mostly from the Chambal basin in Madhya Pradesh.

Gitanjali Kanwar, senior coordinator of World Wildlife Fund for Nature-India, who has been part of the project along with officials of the Punjab forest and wildlife department, said Mustafa’s claim appeared highly plausible, yet acquiring further on-the-ground information is imperative to ascertain its veracity.

Kanwar explained that we are aware of individuals utilising unmanned sections of the Satluj at the international border, which increases the likelihood of gharials crossing into Pakistan.

“We know that gharials have made their way from Harike into the main channel of the Satluj, which crosses the international border and flows into Pakistan. However, further information is necessary to determine the exact distance at which the animal has been observed from the international border,” Kanwar added.

Hussainiwala, the last town on the Indian side in Ferozepur district, faces Ganda Singh Wala on the Pakistan side, just across the Satluj.