The Threat That Crocodiles Pose | Crocodile Blues | Real Wild

The gharial is the world's oldest

crocodile

, it evolved before the dinosaurs and at the peak of its distribution it thrived in rivers from Spain to Japan, it was 20 feet long and weighed a ton. It is the fish-eating

crocodile

par excellence and one of the most important evolutions. Successful species: The gharial's continued existence on the planet is due in part to one man, Romulus Whitaker, in the 1970s. Rahm and his colleagues brought the gharial back from the very brink of extinction and have spent the last thirty years fighting to reset this crocodile. and protect its dwindling habitat, they were making slow but steady progress until last winter, when a mysterious and unprecedented massive dial brought this giant reptile to its knees.

Is he about to witness the first crocodile spread in human history, or will he and his team be able to? saved this powerful creature from this current crisis this is the story of a crocodile that after 150 million years of existence has been reduced to less than 200 breeding animals. I can remember the time I saw my first live baby girl, the first time I picked one up. I think my sense of awe for this creature just hasn't changed, it hasn't diminished one bit, it's too animalistic when he was a kid and moved to India with his family in this

wild

life wonderland, he developed a passion by everything related to reptiles, captivated. by snakes and captivated by

crocodiles

, he made them his life's work and 60 years later he is a living legend in the world of herpetology and conservation, but the animal that has caused him the most is the iconic Indian crocodile , Garry's evolution has tuned this thing.

To be the most efficient fisherman, the best river crocodile the universe has ever produced, the gharial is perfectly adapted to its aquatic habitat powered by its muscular tail, its webbed feet and its natural glasses make it a swimming machine, it is capable of controlling a specific gravity by changing its internal organs rise and fall at will and its thin snout with sharp teeth is the best tool for fishing, but the gharial's extreme specializations make it exceptionally vulnerable, the girl is so finely tuned and so closely linked to her river habitat which, in any case, If it goes wrong, the girl would be like a fish out of water when Rome carried out the first studies of

crocodiles

in India in the 1970s, she discovered that there were fewer than ten males adults surviving in the

wild

with habitat conservation and a restocking program by 2006, the total population had increased. more than a thousand, but in December 2007 the recovering gharials were dealt a devastating blow.

Okay, many means how many gorillas died. No, that is something very, very serious that is happening here. I'll go there as soon as I can. This has to happen now. It means that it is very, the Tumble River Sanctuary in northern India is home to almost half of the world's population of wild Gale, as Rahm had learned, 10% of this vital population had died in sudden and mysterious circumstances. . I fear the worst because this is

real

ly a box with all your apples in one basket, you know if something is killing off the contagious gorillas or is it something here reversible and I don't know where it goes again and as soon as Rahm arrives, another dead gharial has appeared raising the death toll at 90 is a devastating scene, but Ron's emotions must be left on hold as the scientist comes to terms with this mistake.

This is basically an older adult in a way, the most important segment or sector of the population is the female that lays the eggs and you know, she populates the river. so let's try to learn as much as we can from this this loss news of the disaster has spread around the world an important species is on the brink emergency response teams have been sent to the fall and Rahm has joined A group of Indian and international veterinarians said they worked with an improvised autopsy on the banks of the river. The color of the meat is normal and it is very fresh.

The autopsy is vital to finding out what killed this gharial and may provide clues as to what is causing the larger dial. this animal literally just died, I mean, we're talking about early this morning, that means it's in good shape, you know, at this stage of the exam you're not trying to interpret everything you see, you're just trying to make sure you don't get lost. nothing in the picture so you can see that the pieces make sense, so make sure you describe each piece on this page and don't find something that is a sign of that disease or that the vets address each of the organs in turn, the lungs They show no obvious signs of damage, but the team is particularly interested in the joints and kidneys, which show an unusual buildup of a white powdery substance from which the teams have gathered as many clues as they can. have learned about this, but I have learned a lot because the animals examined previously were all animals that were already quite rotten and many of the organs had dissolved or would be discovered. to something like this, but I think the most important thing we're going to learn from this is what veterinarians come up with.

This is a

real

ly bleak scenario. My colleagues and I have worked in rivers like the jungle since the 70s and These are animals so close to our home. I think we are trying to deal with the situation, the tragedy probably in the same way you handle it on the front lines when there is a war, it's so bad, this is the moment when all the birds go home as the team returns to Rome and wonders if there are more clues to the cause of the disaster in other parts of the area surrounding the river. In the 1970s we did some of the first studies of crocodiles and found them in the fall.

One of the wildest rivers left in India still had some gharial in it and sure enough, it turned out to be the place where the liberation program was started and in 1979 the government formed the National Canal. Thank you all for protecting this fantastic stretch of river that is over 400 kilometers and now has the largest area population in the world. It is not just conservation laws that have preserved the sanctity of this landscape. These wild ravines used to be the hideout of really famous robber bandits called Malkin Singh and Man Singh and the famous bandits Clean and David their days are over but the place is still wild it is still a dangerous place they are still dangerous people yes, but what is did by the Tumble River actually protects the place because people were just afraid to come here.

That's probably one of the reasons the girl has survived here and we're never bandits either; We are now proud that it is her turn to join her colleagues to protect the gharial and the river and it seems that the dangers are now more complicated than population pressure alone. It may seem like a pristine desert, but somewhere in the river lurks the

threat

that is decimating its most precious inhabitant. The next morning, veterinarians work hard to perform another autopsy, this time on a baby gharial working in the bathroom of her hotel. They are weighing three. possible causes of death, parasite poisoning and infection, but they need to compare their samples with those of a healthy living gharial, so Raman, the team, returns to the river and helps coordinate the operation.

He is one of India's leading environmentalists. Kartick Satyanarayan must be arrested. Brian, take the The whole boy doesn't capture everything, so that's what they brought last night, yeah, this is the only nipple. All good, yes, but we have a backup gathered here on the right, this is what this bass okay, okay, now we are and we have. a tornado came from Agra, so yeah, I don't think we have in each of you, we won't take any chances if you need something we want to do, you say there are too many cooks for the soup, in this case everyone disagrees.

An operation like this, if it's not well planned, obviously you're not going to say it was successful, so it's worth all this banter and endorsement, and to make sure that we have all of that in play, we can log in, you know, that's great, yes, I love it. when someone is the right word and ready to move on, thanks Patrick, fantastic, we got here, okay, let's catch at least one area alive and healthy, it's very important for veterinary doctors because they need to monitor the blood and you can. You don't take blood from a dead girl, even blood freezes, so we really need a library.

Although the Chamba river century is 250 miles long, all of the affected gharials come from a 25 mile stretch, it also appears that only a certain size class of animals are being affected, adding to the mystery is the fact Other river reptiles, such as the mugger crocodile and soft-shelled turtles, appear to be in good health, and birds that share the gharial's diet also appear unaffected. You are looking at a bird that eats fish. I have the same food chain as the gharial, so if the girl is being affected by something in the fish in the food chain, why isn't the bird?

But while ROM is busy pondering the mystery, Karthik has to work on one. out of the many nets, got the catch of the day and made the bird smile with the wrong face, oh man, she is beautiful, fantastic man, I mean, this is such a good man, beautiful, absolutely, mato, she is talking, Don't worry, we won't be gone for long. It's very fortuitous because the group of doctors arrives at the same time, so we have all the experts and now we are going to be able to obtain a blood sample. It seems like a good place.

I think it turned out incredibly well. I mean, first. all the odds that we got a library within a few hours of trying and we got it right with the size class of the animals that are dying in the fall, the way they got blood cell samples from the liver, they got a little a little bit of content gastric, in other words, you know, stomach contents, there's a little bit of pain when the needle goes into the skin because it has nerves and you know, like any of us who get an injection, but she didn't really have any problems, the point is.

We're trying to find the source of this problem and for a girl to suffer for a few minutes in some pain, I think it is really necessary at this moment because we are trying to get to the bottom of a major die-off that has never happened to any crocodile between Our scientists and ecologists fear that we were on the brink of multiple extinctions as ecosystems around the world collapsed, could the mysterious gharial dial track some major cataclysmic event? Well, this is a very sacred moment. I have to remember that gorillas are capable of almost completely turning around and, as another of our most endangered animals, we have reached the limit if the world is finally ready to sit up and take notice.

Wow, okay, great, ah, while Rahm waits. to the veterinarians to report his findings, he returns south to Chennai and the Madras Crocodile Bank. This is the center he established in 1976 for captive breeding of India's endangered crocodiles. Over the years, he has raised thousands of animals for release into the wild. It is now an internationally renowned research center and educational facility and headquarters for Roman conservation work. croc Bank is really the foundation of all our crocodile conservation operations in India. Everything we have learned about crocodiles. This is the deposit. This is where we start all our field work. and this is where we end up when we return home for three decades ROM has increased the gharial population of the crocodile banks is an insurance policy against their decline in the wild mortality has reduced the wild breeding number to less than 200 roms the Efforts here are suddenly key to the survival of the species in the 1970s, the crocodile bank inherited the first for Gary.

There are now 13 adults and these are the two sexually mature males at the beginning of the annual breeding cycle, each attempting to assert dominance over the other. It's the height of the mating season and we get to see some really amazing things here at the gharial farm. This is the time of year when one male tries to outdo the other and scare the other away while they can't get it. outside of here, so sometimes they fought massively against them, the males could establish their own pecking order, but it was up to Rome to perfect the art of breeding them in the 70s, we really had no idea how to breed them in captivity and they had never bred in captivity before, which was quite critical and quite obvious from the beginning, that we had to have adult animals and it was 13 years before the gharial finally grew its Gura and the typical smell and we realized that now it is the At which point the gara gives the Goyle its name, it is a lump of cartilage that grows on the snout of mature males and plays a key role in attracting a mate.

Their real method of attracting females is to do something we call a snort. It sounds very rude, but it seems to be very effective and is created bythe fact that the male's gara sitting on top of his nostrils, you know, modifies the sound of the whistle into this very, very strange but effective way of attracting the females when they finally start. It was an amazing day for us at the first clutch of eggs. I think it was only 12 eggs and pretty much all of them hatched, so we knew we were doing something right. What was wrong.

What his team accomplished in the 1970s was vital for the future. Of the species, it was extremely important for us to breed the Rooster in captivity, at that time there were only 200 in the wild. I mean, these things were really endangered, so it was critical that we get the captive-bred gharial from Rome from the captive breed. It has been released into the wild at two locations in the fall and at a sanctuary on the Guha River called Catania. God Rome needs to make sure devastating tremors haven't taken over this second sanctuary, so he traveled to Catania to take advantage of it.

The same bad thing is like coming home, this is Catalonia, I mean, we have 15 to 20 kilometers of pristine river that we have, we have gharial, we have raiding birds. I would call it one of India's best kept secrets. It really is a Garden of Eden for one of my favorite animals, the gharial, but the rest of the life here is totally amazing too. Rome's first task is to travel. length of the protected area and carry out our defenses by checking the number and health of the gharials of the Catania guards. It's just amazing to think what's happening with the drop rate and when the varials just die like flies, but it's even more important than a place like Catania.

I got a safe friend area in 2006, there were about 60 adult gharials living in the Catania sanctuary. I was wrong to hope that this population has at least remained stable. A preliminary tour has revealed around 30 Gary and fortunately all of these animals are in good health I would say. There is a secure population here and as a backup to the fallen populations it is now more important to ensure it remains intact, but Catania was left within minutes and the secured ROM population had just over three miles of ideal living habitat. To look at it from a global perspective, we really have probably 25% of the entire breeding population of gharials in the world here, in a small patch of habitat with no protection below or above, so it's very finite and very fragile. and although these gharials are free from the mysterious dial, they are beset on all sides by other pressures that can prove just as deadly, even right in the sanctuary here there are several people living here this is a very, very populated state, the state of It would be that Finnish population pressures are everywhere a major

threat

to Catania's wildlife.

Fishing is done illegally in the sanctuary itself. It happens up to its borders. Both subsistence and upstream fishermen and gharials have long competed for the same catch, but today's contract fishers and monofilament nets give people an unfair advantage and have an unfortunate side effect for fishermen. gharials, the outsiders downstream eventually catch fish and the important thing is, well, you can see that the prey base for the gharials is perfect here, but the problem is that the gharials start to get into something. This is how they get caught their teeth become crooked and they could even drown this is a big problem fortunately they have solved it inside the sanctuary but it is safer Gary oh, he doesn't know where the limits of the sanctuary are, he comes down the river and gets trapped it is very, very bad business for a girl the threat to Catania god scares Allah obvious to Rome but the cause of death elsewhere remains a mystery speculation about infectious diseases and parasites is correct but veterinarians are concentrating on poisoning through of the food chain other The Indian animal that could have a clue about the fate of the gharial is the vulture.

It shares a diet with many of India's scavengers and where the rest of these scavengers are going from strength to strength, only the vultures are circling towards extinction, which is why it is a pleasure to watch. these vultures here is because in the last ten years we have lost perhaps even more than 90 percent of India's vultures due to a specific drug called diclofenac. It's a simple drug that farmers give their livestock to reduce pain, but it's something that attacks the vulture's kidneys and they die very, very quickly. Roma suspects that something similar may be causing mass marking of the gharial and that whatever is killing the gharial in the jungle may also be specific to that species, but at the moment it appears to be the Catania gharial.

The intestines are at least safe from extinction, and that night, when Rahm returns, the sanctuary is about to host a remarkable spectacle. For more than one hundred and fifty million years, the darriel have nested on the banks of rivers, but now they are in one of the last strongholds. reduced to picking on a single bank of fans and Rahm may be about to witness one of the last times this happens. Sunset is approaching. I'm a little surprised, but it looks like one of us girls is starting to climb. bench you know from here anyway it looks like she has a belly full of balls so she goes up in a very jerky way it's a very steep back it's a very steep back I'm going to bother her and you know that quite weak legs are strong for swimming sneakily to climb onto the ground this is an apple sorry up there but there are other gharials interested in this particular sandbar females that have already nested are watching the proceedings as closely as badly there is another one approaching a big one looks thinner, it seems like she's already laid her eggs and she's a little worried about that company she's digging up, it was her defensive mode, it doesn't matter if it's another girl, did someone dig up something she likes, there's a good chance that's it. of them to collect the eggs for the previous lover, there is definitely a need to protect them in this way while the camera struggled with the dim light.

More gharials have arrived, the island is filling up, and the dominant females are starting to compete for the best views at the top. of the sandbar, both large females are making fun of their escapes to understand it, yes, they are trying to solve, you know who's boss here, it's actually until I've never seen this before, I mean, but it's obvious that the females are defending their nesting place, there are even other females, so there is a kind of pecking order, a certain hierarchy, Graham, this is a small sandbar, so there really is not enough room for all these animals, which is a obvious reason why this is happening.

The great antennae not only compete with each other for the best nesting sites, but they also need to face the threat of a mother crocodile that is equally interested in the high sandbar. The dominant females are distracted leaving an opportunity at the other end of the island, the smallest one is now on top, she is starting to scrape the sound with her legs, in fact you can see it even without the fan of the culprits flying through the air, the Gharial uses its powerful hind legs and webbed feet to excavate a nest as deep as its legs. a long time yeah she started digging so now you start to see different colors and when you come out at first it was dry sand that dark thing is the camshaft inside so she's making her own on a theme that It had never before been documented what the island had become. a busy maternity ward as more gharials arrived and claimed a precious patch of sand to begin their timeless nesting ritual, a process that would last well into the night, getting very dark.

I can barely see what is going on, there are definitely a couple of taro each garrier will lay up to 50 eggs which will incubate for 70 to 80 days and hatch just before the start of the monsoon the next morning and the nesting frenzy will end up leaving the island covered with the scars of last night's laying activity amazed by overpopulation. On the small rom sandbar and Boris's guard loop they approach to count the newly dug net using a wire rod to gently probe the sand, they find six newly laid nests, bringing the total on this island to 24 pits. very busy, it's totally incredible and We're probably seeing maybe even a quarter of all the nesting effort of all the wild gharials in the world on this little spit of land.

It is about 40 meters long and 20 meters wide. It's a tiny place totally vulnerable to monsoon flooding, but the vast majority of the gharials on the tour are laying eggs right here and we've noticed that some nests, meaning some of the nesters, have actually excavated other nests and a couple of eggs lying around, so this is very, very limited and it is very worrying also because what is going to happen to each other sometimes look at this steep embankment on this side come and look at this here another steep embankment on this side side it is so obvious that the gharial prefers this they want to climb something high, that really makes sense in every sense of the word because this river rises very fast and if it grew out of season early all the eggs would be submerged in the ground.

Roma hopes her worst fear doesn't come true because the small island appears to be the Gary's only nesting site whole and sworn it's a precarious setting for an already endangered species just a few miles downstream it's a powerful sight. why today there are so few gharial nesting sites where for millions of years they happily burrowed there in the sandy sand of Ness India is now mining construction sand on an epic scale sand - river bed sand mining I mean , we have sand India is growing growing growing growing building more houses building everything except extracting it from a river bed is not a good slogan for hydrology and certainly not good for Gary Gary loses sunbathing spots, they lose their nesting place.

Same for turtles, it's already bad, although this river bed looks like a desert, not long ago this was the main habitat of gharials, every river bed in India is getting drier and drier every year. and this is not natural and we are just taking the water for irrigation, we are damming it, we are brushing it with a canal, we are just doing everything we can to get water to other places for agriculture, necessary things, but necessary. I am sure it has to be done sensibly too, we have to remember that we are looking after the gharial.

Okay, at Cross Bank, the most successful enclosure emulates slopes and banks that could drive me crazy, and while Rahm has been away, her precious female Roxanne has laid her annual clutch of eggs. This is a spot just where Bin Martha, although this sandbar may be perfect for Roxanne to nest, the conditions here in the deep south of India are too hot for successful incubation, so the eggs need to be excavated to ensure that will hatch, the reason the pioneers have a stick in their hand is because they are defending their nest, nothing like a saltwater crocodile or a raider, but they still have sharp teeth and they really don't like the idea of ​​you stealing from them the eggs.

It's not just rocks and who's upset that Roma's nest reads the dominant male is taking an unhealthy interest in the proceedings. He's a big guy and a little scarier than the females, so we have to be a little careful here because you know when you get like that. By concentrating on your work, you simply forget about the best thing, a small toothy creature behind you. It is very important to mark the orientation of each egg because if you turn the egg over, you can kill the embryo in the current context in which the gharial is critically endangered and the death that is occurring in the prickly pear, breeding programs In captivity like this they become more and more important and it is really critical that we have this repository of captive animals, so as a security measure, we hope with all our might that the gharial does not disappear. extinct in the wild but still this is the backup this is the insurance policy eighty-six forty-seven and one last forty-eight that is the largest clutch size we have ever had in madras crocodile bank for gary oh that's amazing forty eight eggs thank you Roxanne Well, let's take the eggs to the little incubator.

Well, basically what we have to do here is candle the eggs because that determines whether the eggs are fertile and strange, and nickel is an expert at this, but in order to do that we have to change the lights out, okay, let's see what we have. This moving dark horizontal line shows that the egg is viable. The black spot on the top of the egg is called bands and it grows as the embryo continues to develop, so India always sticks to the top so you can We're talking, we call it a proton, right, really this is the safe treatment for eggs like nitroglycerin, it's easy, Dogra's love metal will explode with its precious shape clutchSafely and secretly, Rom has returned to the place where the Winter Dial fell.

To continue the mystery, with the arrival of warmer weather, gharial deaths seem to have stopped and, by studying their autopsy samples, veterinarians may have made a breakthrough: they have discovered that the white powder observed in the gharial organs is crystallized uric acid. The acid is not very soluble and at a certain level it reaches saturation. When it reaches saturation, it crystallizes. The amount of uric acid in the blood is controlled by the kidney and when levels are this high, it indicates kidney failure. Can it become a The central organ and the girl are like any other when uric acid builds up in the joints, causing gout, a debilitating condition that in a reptile can be fatal and in an animal, this kind of thing no longer They can move these limbs, so they come and go. the sandbar to a huge moment and very often they can't even show their swimming of course they read the danger feed for liability which makes it even sadder in a way that made us yes yes everything filmed during the dial, these images show the agony of death. a gharial crippled by an agonizing drop the record low winter temperatures in the fall may also have played a role in this disaster the solubility of uric acid varies with temperature, so cold temperature could certainly play a role in the equation lawsuit or illness in the sentence this It is inevitable that the Vettes believed that death was caused by gout caused by a combination of cold weather and kidney failure and that the kidney failure itself was caused by poisoning.

It must be a toxin. There must be something toxic in the water. fish or something they are eating for somehow and I have to talk to him about something it seems that the vulture of Rome's hunch was correct and that the flying gharial has been poisoned we have all been wondering what has been happening with the girl and the suspicious was, but it's a parasite or a disease, a virus, in fact, kind of wild speculation around the world about what was going wrong with the gharial, but this has really narrowed it down because, as Fritz and Brian the culprit has to be some kind of toxin the vets had figured out how the gharial died but the presence of a toxin has opened up a new can of worms for Rome what is this toxin if it is still lurking in the waterfalls and how did it get there over there?

The jungle itself is one of the healthiest waterways in India, but the river it empties into just downstream of the sanctuary is far from clean. The Yamen is perhaps a sacred river, but after flowing through the industrial heartland of Delhi and Agra it is one of the most polluted in the world and Ron suspects this could be the source of the lethal toxin that has devastated the gharial for which he We walk along the shores. del chumbo is actually the end of the fall because in just a few seconds we will reach the confluence of the Yamuna river and the chumbo and I think you will be able to see for yourself that we have one. from the dirtiest rivers in India to here to meet one of the cleanest rivers in India.

If you get close to the edge here and look down, you certainly see what the EM was talking about every time he descends from Delhi and Agra and encounters the fallen river. here and well, from what I'm told, Kali forma, in other words, the bacteria and other nasty things that cause disease, has a count of about fourteen thousand here and the fallen river count is twenty-one, so I guess if took a sip of this water, it probably wouldn't last more than a few minutes, while everyone spins around in the water if another piece of the gaya puzzle dies it's the food chain, in other words the fish and the girl lead the obvious answer . is that the food is fish from Yemen guiding the jumble and probably moving upstream a notable factor could be what the fishermen told us recently is that perhaps there were over 40 different species of fish in the Yamuna before and now there is only one and That happens to be an exotic African tilapia, so something very, very serious is going wrong here from an ecological point of view, the fact that many species of fish disappeared and were replaced by one species, the only one that can withstand this kind of toxicity and turbidity, the disaster. which we call mmm As soon as the climate warmed, there were no more gharials dying in the fall, but there is no evidence that the toxin, whatever it was, has left the ecosystem and there are many good reasons to believe that extinction could occur. again, when the cold weather returns, the positive side of this, however, never before has so much attention been focused on the gharial and how to save it, the government, the researchers, the people who have been working on garel in the past, Everyone is incredibly motivated and now permits have been granted and everyone is on board to try to find the answers, but until this toxin and its source can be identified and removed from the jungle, the fight to save the gharial in the wild must be fought. elsewhere and Rome just received a package. from a colleague who suggests that Catania perhaps got that spot last year.

Our friend and fantastic natural photographer Suresh Shelby was in Catania and hit it off with wildlife warden Rhenish Pandey and they saw an incredible sight and filmed it: the lack of nesting sites in Catania. God is so sharp that when 16 gharial nests hatched last year, 500 babies took their first steps in the same few meters of sand, all on the same island where we witnessed this year's lane, we were on the Nejat cutter just two ago months, in April, That little island that had maybe 16 or 18 nests last year, there were at least 20 and possibly even 25 or more nests on that little island.

Can you imagine what we are going to see? I mean, he's phenomenal, he can appear in these scenes. that the gharial species is in poor health, but there are a limited number of nests here because there is no other suitable place for them in the entire river due to the small side of the sanctuary, only a handful of these babies, if any, have survived, but it is a notable fact. seen and it's the first time it's been filmed and Rome wants to congratulate his colleague on duty in Katonah hello seriously, they call a good avi DVD they declare that it's fantastic, you know, I've never seen so many girls in one place at the same time in the entire my life.

I'm not even sure, but a storm is brewing in Catania. God I took it, so what's going on with yoga nests? The news Brahms has just received is that the southwest monsoon has arrived in Catania and received an annual attack of 80 percent of India's rainfall. The monsoon arrives. on the south coast in June and spreads northwards across the country with mechanical predictability, but this year the rains came two weeks early and the river is in full flow, rising dangerously close to the top of gharial nesting island as the Rom run from the Chennai forest. Guard Ramu is mounting a rescue mission on the island and it is a catastrophic scene.

More than half of the sandbar has been washed away along with hundreds of eggs desperate to salvage what they can. The forest. God tapped the surface of the sand as if the mother gharial was listening. at the call of any baby that has already hatched, but there is no response, the eggs vanish before their eyes, they have no choice, they collect the handful of surviving nests that the captives raise and, as the island crumbles around them to their feast, they retire to the mainland within. hours, the river in full state of monsoon has sealed the fate of the sanctuaries, the only nesting place of gharials, meanwhile, Rome has reached Catania.

I heard a little earlier, while those on the crocodile bank, that the river had risen much, much earlier than usual. this has endangered the main nesting bank Roma doesn't realize how dramatic the change is, my goodness it's just amazing how different the bridge is, the pontoon bridge that was there in the summer, they are gone the sandbanks we saw there with a big girl laughing, I have completely missed the rivers from one bank to the other and what you are about to discover is that the gharial nesting island and all its nests have been destroyed by the flood, that blank patch of water that's there where the nesting island was that's where all the girls laid their eggs this year 25 nests or more and it's gone, I mean, completely gone, like a ship sank with all the missing crew members, you know what I mean, there's no trace of it. left the girl just did what they always do, what they are programmed to do and have done well for millions of years, it's just a very changing scene now that there is deforestation in the upper Himalayas and these rivers run much much faster that never, on top of that, we have the specter of global warming that is ruining the seasons and perhaps this is a symptom that we have over a billion people on this subcontinent and they may not physically enter this sanctuary but the pressures from the outside the pressures upstream are very visible and have created this disaster this year the disaster on the tour is another blow to the survival of the gharial in the wild the future of the population of the tour hangs in the balance and here in Catania I got the contribution of a quarter of the world's garyun s will be zero once again this ups the ante for the rom eggs in the crocodile bank because these eggs and the few rescued from the sand now have even more responsibility for the future of species, but a captive population means very little without wild habitats, so before you return to the roms of Croc Banks, investigate where the gharial might nest in the future.

Luckily, I know this is where the nesting island was and now all these years. water, I mean, has completely swept it away and what we're going to do now is try to survey this island because it's the closest possible nesting site for next year's nest guard coming off the boat. Rome wants to make sure that any Wildlife on the prowl knows it's coming I don't want to be drafted I don't want to go I don't want anyone to shoot me in the trench octel what bears do bears live in this? We are not exactly in the middle of gharial.

Habitat Here we are actually looking for what I would consider good rhino and elephant habitat, but the pur

pose

of this somewhat ridiculous exercise is to try to find an embankment that might be suitable for gharial nesting next year. I was expecting the land to start tilting up but it doesn't seem to be level and I'm NOT a rhino, in fact we're going down again, not a very good sign, going back into the mud is a bit disappointing, not really It looks great for the goryeo because What I was hoping was that the island would have a high enough slope that we could find an embankment.

I mean, even if it wasn't sandy, at least we could do something with it, enough habitat manipulation and getting rid of some of the vegetation. and piling up sand can create, you know, an ideal home habitat, but you know you have to start with something, to begin with, at least something a little higher than the river level. Here we are so standing and with water almost up to our knees, anyway we try like Rama. We already know that in this small expanse of protected habitat there are few suitable sandbanks, especially as the monsoon floods of this ferocious place make us increasingly open to the idea that we are creating fantastically disastrous climate change and the gharial is over. so tied to what could be called the rhythms of the planet that it will not be able to adapt, they cannot move away, they traditionally have a nest where they always nested forced or in this case high water Rome is realizing that conservation in the future will have We need to be much more proactive, wouldn't it be great if we could leave nature alone and everything will be fine?

Unfortunately, this is not the case and it increasingly seems that way. we have to make interventions, in fact we have to change the habitats to make them more suitable for animals like the girl, who lost all her nesting habitat this year and now we have to start making plans for next year and what ten years after those . I have been involved in girls conservation since the beginning and I am not going to give up now, it is my top priority without the dedication of a handful of people like ROM, the gharial would have become extinct long ago in the face of this year's disasters, the future of the species is at rest. firmly on her shoulders in Chennai, Roma is about to find out if her egg bank crop can bring any hope.

What happens to these eggs? When they are ready to hatch the baby starts to move inside the egg and can you hear it is just a very very slight sound but it is a small growl that comes from inside the egg the gharial actually communicates it with its parents and tells the female when she is ready to emerge the entire clutch begins to sing in a small chorus, this is when maternal love arrives and she digs them up in this case with us, so we are the surrogate father, we are here now, let's see if this guy born in my hand, yes, it's like it comes, it comesIn the wild, burrowing mothers would encourage them to escape. the shell of him, but here in the rom maternity ward, he is lending a hand.

It's absolutely incredible. Barrios has been incubating for millions and millions of years. What I'm observing now is something that goes back to the time of the dinosaurs and beyond you. I know that seeing this fills me with a sense of wonder that I can never help. This little hatchling can grow up to 6 meters to 20 feet long, but at this stage it is so vulnerable that this little newborn girl doesn't know it and could simply mean future survival of the species, it seems we have beautifully perfected the art. to read them in captivity, but what will happen to him next, that is the problem.

Rome's 30-year fight to save the gharial is coming to an end right now. It's time to decide if there is still a place for this magnificent creature in our modern world. Realizing that an animal as fantastic as a little girl could be on the verge of extinction should make us feel deeply ashamed of ourselves. There is much more we can do. do and we are not doing