Here Be Dragons

MCBT is first with anacondas

2011-12-22T14:22:00.012+05:30

MCBT was the first zoo in India to house anacondas.

They're one of those creatures. Bad movies get made about them. In fact, VERY bad movies get made about them. Dodgy documentaries tell you of monster snakes 35, even 50, feet long.

Images of caimans getting the squeeze put on them by anacondas are shown as though this is the norm.

So, what's the truth?

Well first, a few facts about our recent arrivals.

Madras Crocodile Bank Trust imported both green and yellow anacondas into India in October 2011. This means we were the first zoo in India to house anacondas. We remain the only zoo in India that houses both green anacondas and yellow anacondas.

Our snakes are being held in quarantine, whilst we plan and build a new exhibit for them. This exhibit will be an early stage of our Master Plan. So for the moment, the anacondas remain off display.

Whilst this means that visitors will have to wait a few months to see them, for us it means that we can ensure the health and establish a correct feeding and maintenance schedule for the snakes, and they can get used to us. As they grow

, our knowledge and skills with them will also grow.

Beautiful young Green anaconda

OK, now the facts on anacondas.

These snakes are native to South America.

Are they the biggest snake in the world? These guys are the heaviest snakes, but not the longest. That honour goes to the reticulated python...and we have one of those here, too. Anacondas would normally attain a size of around 16 foot (5m) for females, and males around 10 foot (3m) - in the wild. In captivity, this sexual dimorphism (difference between the sexes) is less pronounced, as some captive males have reached just over (13 foot) 4m in length.

Many years ago, a reward was offered for proof of any snake over 30 feet in length (that's about 9m). Thus far, no-one has claimed this reward, so I think it is extremely safe to say that extant snakes do not exceed this size. Maximum sizes of animals are tough to find (well, confirmed data, anyway). It is not clear-cut how large the biggest anaconda on record was...but it seems around 24 or 25 feet (just under 8m). That's big enough...Such a size for anacondas seems akin to a human that is over 7 foot tall - it happens, but not very often.

AS far as weight goes, up to around 180kg seems about it. Normal maximum weights should be around 75 - 90kg for adult females.

If you hear or read any report of anacondas eating entire villages, you need to start reading better material. Total lies, exaggerations and rubbish. Anacondas normally move away at any sign of humans.

These sizes are for the green anaconda (Eunectes murinus). There is also the yellow anaconda (Eunectes notaeus). These are very pretty, and smaller, than the green anaconda. A maximum size is perhaps 2m for males (2.8m in captivity) and just under 4m for females.

Both anaconda species (and there are another two possible species from Bolivia and coastal Brazil) are largely aquatic. They can swim well, hunt in or near water, and eat fish, mammals, birds and reptiles. The larger female green anacondas can indeed dine on small spectacled caimans. But then, spectacled caimans can dine on small green anacondas, too. So it all comes out in the wash.

For breeding, green anacondas are known to form 'mating balls'. Here, the female is totally overwhelmed by smaller males, as they wrap around her to mate. The yellow anacondas do not seem to need this, although it does happen in the wild.

Anacondas reach maturity in about 5 - 7 years, although this can be cut to around 3 or 4 years in captivity, due to faster growth from better temperature controls and regular supplies of quality food.

Staff at MCBT are very proud to house these snakes, and we are looking forward to designing and constructing a suitable enclosure for these impressive reptiles. Keep an eye out here for news of when they will go on public display.

Next time, though, I will write about the 4 species of crocodilians that have also been added to MCBT.

All at MCBT would love to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and every happiness and health for 2012.

Happy Birthday Croc Bank!

2011-08-25T13:42:00.003+05:30

This Friday - 26th August 2011 - marks the 35th Birthday of Madras Crocodile Bank.

That's 35 years of working to save India's native reptiles, crocs in particular.

This weekend, Croc Bank will be celebrating with feeding demonstrations, competitions, special information areas, meet the staff opportunities - lots of stuff happening.

This Sunday at 3pm, the very beautiful Jaws III will be fed. Our star saltwater crocodile, Jaws is over 16 foot long, and the sight of him coming out of the water to have his dinner is pretty awe-inspiring.

But also, we will be announcing a significant opportunity for reptile research that has a conservation goal. More about that in the coming days.

In the meantime, if you are in the Chennai area, please come along over the weekend and help us to celebrate.

We hope to see you there.

Multi-species Survey in River Gandak, Bihar with focus on Gharial & Ganges river dolphin

2010-10-13T10:03:00.007+05:30

The multi-species survey of data deficient and biodiversity rich Indian rivers/river stretches was conceptualized in the ‘River Watch’ workshop organized at Jiwa Ji University, Gwalior in 2006. Mr. Ravi Singh (Secretary General & CEO, WWF-India), Romulus Whitaker (MCBT), R. J. Rao (Jiwa Ji University), Parikshit Gautam and Sandeep Behera (WWF-India), D. Basu (GCA), Sunil Choudhary (T. M. Bhagalpur University) and Forest officials of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan were present in the workshop, and all agreed on the need and importance of conducting multi-species survey of rivers by joining hands. Rivers Kosi and Gandak in Bihar were identified for conducting such survey. Accordingly, Vikramshila Biodiversity Research & Education Center (VBREC) under T. M. Bhagalpur University did a Recce of Rivers Kosi and Gandak supported by WWF-India, in 2007, and based on the notes of the Recce, the present survey was conducted in the River Gandak in January 2010. VBREC was given the key role of organizing the river survey and the partner agencies joining the survey included, WWF-India, Wildlife Trust of India, Gharial Conservation Alliance and Forest officials of Bihar State.
Prior to this survey, River Gandak in Bihar had never been assessed for gharial population. There were few reports about the presence of gharial population surviving in the Gandak River in Bihar. In fact, it was S. P. Sahi (former Chief Wildlife Warden of Bihar) who had collected a clutch of gharial eggs from the Gandak in Bihar which had contributed to the initiation of Gharial Conservation Project in India. Somehow, Bihar was not one of the states to be included in the Project Crocodile when it began in 1974-75 in Orissa and Uttar Pradesh to be followed by Tamil Nadu, M.P, W.B, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala in India (personal communication with B C Choudhary of Wildlife Institute of India).
Recent assessments confirm the continued survival of only 5 breeding population of this endemic critically endangered species (Gavialis gangeticus) globally (Nepal & India) of which, only one population in the Chambal River, with about 100 breeding females, is comparatively robust in both numbers as well as distribution while all other populations are relict and seriously threatened. In view of the recent decline in both its range and population size, and goals of Species Recovery plan (SRP), the present survey of River Gandak is important as it examined the possible existence and conservation viability of a reported population of gharial in the Gandak River in Bihar. The survey is also important as it documented the status of other major river fauna such as Ganges River Dolphin (Platinasta gangetica gangetica), Smooth coated otter (Lutrogale perspicillata), birds, turtles as well as the mugger crocodile (Crocodylus palustris), sharing the habitat with gharial. In addition, the assessment for fisheries, river water quality and habitat conditions were also made. Wherever possible, the survey team interacted with local community and educated them about the importance of conserving the river and its unique biodiversity.
I am happy that inspite of severe cold, and threat of violence in the river, the survey was completed successfully, and I hope this report will be helpful in preparing Conservation Action Plan for gharial and other threatened fauna of the Gandak River in Bihar. Full report available here

Sunil Choudhary
Principal Coordinator
River Gandak Survey 2010
VBREC, T. M. Bhagalpur University

Turtles of the rain

2010-10-11T11:27:00.006+05:30

by Utpal Smart

www.sanctuaryasia.com

Published first in Sanctuary Asia, April 2010

The third clap of thunder and sudden frantic patter of raindrops on the roof finally shook me from my slumber. Sitting up with a start I turned towards Deepak, who simultaneously mumbled: “Utpal, wake up. It’s raining…time to head for the field.”

For three weeks, I had been squatting patiently on the forest floor for six hours a day, my eyes fervently locked on an inert assemblage of scutes lying hidden amid the debris of rotten bark, twigs and leaf litter. The dusky brown scutes blended magically with the forest floor, periodically metamorphosing into dry leaves. The unmoving object, which I had set out to observe for three months for my Master’s research was the enigmatic cane turtle. Photo:-Female Vijayachelys silvatica (photo credit Deepak V.)

My study sought to reveal aspects of the undocumented ecology of the species; including the making of an activity-time-budget for the turtle, which required me to keep it under constant observation. What I had quite overlooked was the fact that the word ‘activity’ did not necessarily imply that the turtle had to be ‘active’. Hence, observing it sleeping or withdrawn in the shell (for frustratingly long periods) was as much an ‘activity’ as feeding, or mating.

As luck would have it, my focus species was not at its energetic best when I began my study.
During my long, depressing sessions of gawking at the introverted turtles tucked deep into their shells and litter, I often had to fight the maddening temptation of knocking on the carapace and asking, “Anybody home?” What I wouldn’t do to just to watch them bat an eyelid!

TRACKING THE REPTILES

One trend, though, that surfaced during these apparently uneventful weeks, was that any activity of these chelonians seemed closely associated with humidity levels. They were more likely to be active on days of relatively high humidity while practically vanishing into the forest floor on hot, dry days. This could perhaps be attributed to their strictly terrestrial lifestyle which forces them to conserve moisture.

All four of my research subjects (two individuals of both sexes), had been fitted with radio transmitters by Deepak, my colleague and researcher with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), who monitored their movement patterns and home range. Mine was a short-term study within this larger project, carried out under the guidance of Dr. Karthikeyan Vasudevan and Dr. Bivash Pandav.

As I hurriedly donned my two-piece raincoat, two layers of socks (protection from leeches), tightened my shoelaces and stomped out of the base camp and into the tropical deluge, I heard Deepak say as he strode swiftly past me: “You are in for some interesting behavioural observations today.” Behind us two field assistants trailed on groggily; indifferent to our excitement for active cane turtles. Not that I blamed them, it was 5:30 a.m. and we were positively sleep deprived.

The ground underfoot was mud-spattered and slippery and the forest alive with squirming leeches roused by the rain and in search of warm-bodied blood donors. As I walked, listening to my wet shoes squishing in the mud with each deliberate step and lost in expectant fantasies of cane turtles dancing a jig, I failed to notice that Deepak had frozen in his tracks. He pushed me back firmly and pointed ahead to two burly silhouettes less than 46 metres from us.

As my eyes adjusted to the haze, I realised we were staring at two massive gaurs. The stately male took a few hesitant steps towards us, menacingly stamping the ground, then lowered his head and snorted defiantly. The female retreated behind her mate. Gaurs, are a common sight almost throughout the Western Ghats and don’t usually go looking for people to butt, but they can be extremely dangerous if surprised at close quarters. I stumbled back, preparing to run, yet transfixed by the sheer beauty of the two apparitions in the mist. It took just two loud thwacks of our assistant’s machete on a tree to scare the gaurs away.

As we resumed our walk, a Grey Hornbill snickered momentarily from its concealed perch, perhaps mocking the fleeting bravado of the bison.

INTO THE FOREST

Photo:- Sea of evergreen (photo credit Utpal S)
We soon diverged from the main trail onto a narrower one that meandered furtively into the dark, isolated interior. It was important for Deepak to select a secluded patch of the forest for his telemetry project, for the cane turtle has the dual bane of being both attractive and edible.
Attractive they truly are! The carapace is usually dusky-brown in females, darker and greener in males. The coloration of the head varies from clay to cinnamon-rufous in the former, to black with a geranium-pink snout in the latter. The most outstanding features are the eyes – the iris being amber to chrome-orange, surrounded by a scarlet to flame-scarlet sclera, while the rim of the eyelid is geranium pink. The mandibles are dull beige, sometimes tinged with a hue of red.

We occasionally stuck bright red stickers to the carapace of our study animals to render spotting easy, but we had to be eternally vigilant to ensure their safety as even the most inattentive poachers would also be able to spot them. All it would take then to dispatch these, the smallest of Indian turtles (maximum size 13 centimetres), would be a tiny pocket knife and a pocket. Needless to add, our subjects remained safe through to the end of our study.

As we trudged farther, the light turned distinctly dim, as the lofty evergreen canopy closed in around us. The forest floor, studded with tree stumps, logs, large twigs and thick roots made the trail a veritable steeple chase. Despite our caution, we took turns at stumbling and tripping from time to time. And, as if to add insult to injury, overhanging lianas would insolently tip the cap off my head. There’s more to watch out for in a tropical forest than wild animals!

SPOT THE TURTLE!

In the beginning, I spent an embarrassingly inordinate amount of time crouching low to inspect the leaf litter, examining the shape, design and colour of leaves in search of any irregularity that might reveal a turtle. During my early days in the field, I could barely tell a turtle from the leaf litter, something I internalised as nature’s successful design – not my own observational shortcomings!

“Move aichi,” my assistant called, turning on the radio receiver from the backpack. “Yes, she has moved away,” I concurred. He then handed me the headphones, set the receiver frequency to
3451, the frequency of the transmitter glued to the carapace of a turtle we affectionately called Vijaya. At a distance of 10 m. the receiver would emit periodic beeps that would get stronger as we moved closer to our subject. But that day the signal was weak. Most of the animals actually moved very little in the first three weeks of my study and that too only between 19:00 – 06:00 hours. By the time I reached the scene, usually soon after daybreak, the animals were about as active as the leaves that camouflaged them. Photo:- First recorded observation of a female Cane turtle preying on an endemic snail - Indrella ampulla (photo credit Utpal S)

Yet the sheer joy of discovery, on the occasions that I was able to swivel the antenna above my head, shuffle back and forth and then hone in on one of my subjects is difficult to describe. All too often, however, it was a whistle from my assistant that drew my attention to Vijaya. And every once in a (wonderful) while I would catch her, limbs and head withdrawn, but not necessarily buried in leaf litter! On such occasions, we guessed she must have been on the move when we spotted her… or rather before she spotted us.

MY LUCKY DAY?

On this rainy day, I handed back the headphones to my assistant, motioned for him to settle down and then slowly crouched at a distance of about eight metres from my turtle. Purposefully removing my field notebook, pen and camera, I was now poised to etch out new chapters in the natural history of the cane turtle. “Ok, Vijaya, bring it on!” I said under my breath; but she obviously hadn’t heard my summons or I would not have had to suffer 10 uncomfortably immobile minutes of leg cramps and anxious anticipation. Another 10 minutes passed. Ok then, she is dead! How else could one explain the reluctance of this reptile towards motion?

I glanced enviously towards my assistant sitting some distance away, leaning comfortably against a tree, an open umbrella resting on his shoulder, while he serenely smoked a beedi. He seemed perfectly at ease, and I chuckled nervously at the thought of wild elephants stumbling upon us now, like they had on more than a couple of occasions in the past two months. That was when I perceived a stir from the corner of my eye.

Scarcely breathing, I turned carefully to face Vijaya and made out a black bulge gradually appearing from the shell… the tip of her emerging snout! I watched excitedly as first the mandibles, and then the eyes, and then all of sudden with a forceful jolt, the whole of her head emerged from hiding. She held her head at an angle of 45 degrees from the ground, her eyes wide open and staring directly at me. Five minutes later she extended the whole length of her scrawny neck out of the carapace; simultaneously all four limbs, with the large gray brown scales, popped out of the shell. Then again, her neck stretched out and with her head held aslant (only higher this time), she froze. Not a limb twitched in the long minutes that ensued. As I watched with bated breath, ever-so-slowly, her head turned in my direction, neck strained towards me as though she were sniffing me. I couldn’t help a smile, at this unique moment of droll interface between reptile and man.

THE COST OF DISCOVERY

I knew that the slightest sign of threat from me would cause her to retreat into her carapace, or scurry back into leaf litter. So even as my feet grew numb and a curious brigade of mosquitoes began to investigate my nostrils, I responded only by twitching and contracting my facial muscles spasmodically. However, a harder battle lay ahead for while Vijaya stared at me, a sharp, itchy sensation irritated my chin. Unable to take it anymore, I slowly slid my pen up my fingers and under my chin towards the source of the discomfort. A sly glance at my blood-stained pen confirmed my fears… my chin was playing host to a leech.

I had no other option but to wait until Vijaya turned her head in the opposite direction to quickly wrench off the offending blood sucker In the minutes that followed my subject would repeatedly look away, and then swivel her neck towards the left, centre and right, covering a range of 180 degrees, not unlike a submarine periscope scanning the horizon. At last, convinced that it was safe, she began to move!

She took one deliberate, step after another, lifting her body high above the ground, revealing her long, lean limbs (surprising, since most terrestrial species typically possess elephantine feet). I watched her as she roved around warily, often stopping to scan her surroundings, before moving the next couple of metres.

THE DYNAMICS OF TURTLE MOVEMENT

What intrigued me most was the stupendous effort that she expended in climbing over the obstacles (logs, buttresses etc.) that she encountered. Why didn’t she simply go around them? This was indeed, a bizarre, enigmatic creature!

Her movements were ungainly, involving frequent slips and falls. She seemed to find it surprisingly difficult to negotiate the heterogeneous composition of the forest floor. The underside of the neck was constantly heaving, as if she was gulping down water. I also found it amusing to watch her yawn, a couple of times, with her mouth gaping wide and neck stretched out in front. Interestingly, she didn’t seem to react to slow, smooth movements or slight ruffling of clothes or leaves, but would instantly withdraw her head on hearing any loud thud or seeing a sudden movement. Every so often, she would stop abruptly at seemingly random points and stretch her neck out as her face drooped low over the leaf litter. She would spend minutes together in this odd position, her nose literally resting on the leaves and big, eyes peering down. For a considerable amount of time.

On occasions she would run her nose along the entire surface of a leaf, as though sniffing it. Some leaves she would turn over with her snout. Could this possibly be a way of taking in water? Or was she merely foraging for invertebrates flushed out by the rains?

A friend had once compared observing turtles to ‘watching paint dry’. Be that as it may, I found myself totally fascinated by the wild adventure, mystery and action (in slow-motion) of my subjects – the enigmatic turtles of the rain. In the long days that followed, we were blessed with more rain. I was able to collect enough behavioural data to complete my master’s dissertation. In fact, some of it includes the first ever observations of the turtle feeding on an endemic snail, something that had not been previously reported. My observations on the behaviour of cane turtles might also have interesting implications on the poorly understood phenomenon of water acquisition of this endangered chelonian. I realise that it is easier for most people to appreciate a tiger or an elephant than a turtle but here’s the deal: in most healthy ecosystems, all species are in a state of dynamic equilibrium.

Natural systems are intricately linked and perturbation to even the most ‘insignificant’ species could reduce the ability of a biologically-rich ecosystem to regenerate itself. Even ‘dull’ vertebrates such as the gopher’s tortoise and the Russian tortoise have been identified as keystone species. If Indian natural history and conservation are to evolve in preparation of the many ecological uncertainties ahead, perhaps its time we turned our attention to such little known species who are almost invariably overlooked while formulating equations for the conservation of ecosystems. Despite the lack of attention, they are in truth the unsung heroes of India’s rich and diverse natural history.

Gharial Telemetry Project Interim Progress Report

2010-06-27T15:23:00.027+05:30

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B9H8J-6d_KrpMzdhMTlmNDgtNzJlNi00MjRjLTliMDktOGZhMjdmMjYxMjc4&hl=en

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In an effort to better understand the seasonal movement of gharial in light of the unprecedented die-off in the National Chambal Sanctuary in the winter of 2008/08, a radio-telemetry research project was initiated in March 2009, continued from late June 2008. This MCBT/GCA project was based in Garhaita Village, Etawah District, UP, and conducted in collaboration with the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department and the Madhya Pradesh Forest Departments.
Ten gharial, 8 females and 2 males, ranging from 2.0 – 3.
3m (total length) were captured at two localities (Chilonga and Nakhnoli) on the Chambal river near Garhaita Village, NW of Udi. Individual gharial were outfitted with a distinctive radio transmitter and temperature data logger, tagged with a unique set of cattle tags, permanently marked (tail scute clipping) and released at the capture site (4 at Chilonga and 6 at Nakhnoli).
Capture/tagging was conducting by netting and tagged individuals were released the same day of the capture during the second and third weeks of March, 2009. The ten animals in the study group have been tracked for a total of 13 months through one summer season, one monsoon and one winter period.
Gharial under study showed well defined residence patterns, restricted to approximately 5km of river length, irrespective of season. During the monsoon months, the river length and area/extent of residences increased (by ~33-50%), but monsoon residencies remained well-defined and predictable.

The results of this study strongly suggest that the affected gharial in the current scenario were likely established residents in the immediate area with 5-20km upstream of the confluence. This may explain why the die-off was apparently greatest in the impact area vs. other area further upstream in the Chambal and/or downstream in the Yamuna.

Although environmental conditions during the summer season were ‘normal’, Etawah and surrounding districts experienced an unusually dry monsoon and very cold winter in 2009. Water levels in the Chambal river (by visual observation) are currently at an estimated 5-year low and the monsoon in 2009 was declared a failed monsoon by the IMD (Indian Meteorological Department). In light of this and other factors, it is proposed to continue the study for at least two more years, through 2011-2012, in order to examine animal movements during a ‘normal’ monsoon period and the subsequent dry season.

INTRODUCTION

1. Study Area
The National Chambal Sanctuary is a 428km stretch of the Chambal River, ending at the confluence of the Chambal and Yamuna Rivers at Pachnada and runs through the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The sanctuary area is located in a semi-arid zone in Northern India in the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Mean ambient temperatures range from 2-46 °C with a mean annual precipitation of 591.2mm, the bulk of which is received during the south-west monsoon months of May to August. The bulk of the sanctuary’s landscape is dominated by ravine thorn forest, and there is no evergreen riparian forest left – ground cover is generally sparse throughout. The Chambal river itself is a fast flowing river which originates in the Vindhya hill range of Central India, it flows north-east and eventually joins the Yamuna river at Pachnada, before eventually joining the Ganges River.
This research project was focused on a 115 km stretch of river from Pinahat (N26.864170° E78.363723°) to Sasoan Ghat (N26.543776° E79.088323°), which was the affected area of the die-off. This stretch of river, particularly the downstream reaches, was the epicentre (impact area) of the gharial die-off in the winter of 2007/2008. The telemetry study and the active tracking of animals have largely been confined to a study site comprising a 30km stretch of river, from Dinnpura (N26.779278° E78.725937°) to the Udi Bridge (N26.697508° E78.935026°).
2. Need for the study
As a direct result of a mass die-off of the critically endangered gharial in the National Chambal Sanctuary (NCS), there was an immediate need for an assessment of gharial health, population status, and the critical habitats necessary for the species' survival. In addition, this information is a prerequisite for any long-term comprehensive conservation plan. Current methodologies for obtaining these data consist primarily of information from rapid assessment surveys, and it was required to augment this data with detailed studies on gharial behavioural ecology and general biology, with a focus on home range as a tool to help assess the cause of the die-off.
With the assistance of the Forest Department we proposed to capture representative gharial in the impact and affected areas of NCS, mark individual animals with radio transmitters, and then monitor their movements and activities, as well as behaviors, throughout the seasonal cycles. In addition, this study would allow us to identify the critical habitats utilized by representative gharial in different seasons with special reference to their movements in the impact and affected areas of the recent gharial mass mortality.
We anticipated that the study results would yield new important information on gharials and their habitats. In particular, the expected outcomes were the following:
A) Assessment of health and status of gharial population in impact and affected areas,
B) Evaluation of hypotheses about causes/scenarios of recent mass mortality in NCS,
C) Determination of usefulness of telemetry for information necessary to mitigate crisis,
D) Procurement of essential data for a comprehensive species' conservation plan in NCS
The methodologies to be employed involved capture and handling by experienced personnel (MCBT capture team, Forest Department personnel and collaborators), marking and tagging with reliable radio transmitters (Dr. J.W. Lang,), and tracking and observations to be continuous throughout the annual cycle. Data collection and analyses with employ GPS-GIS location and mapping, GIS spatial analysis of gharial seasonal movements and critical habitats in the impacted and affected areas. The study was endorsed by the State Forest Departments of UP, MP, Rajasthan, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) and WWF-India.

3. Rationale
In the light of the recent reversals, it is evident that there is urgent need for an immediate, as well as long-term assessment of gharial health, population status, and critical habitats necessary for the species' continued survival in the NCS. This requires in-depth knowledge about dispersal, movements and migration of the species which inhabits a linearly extensive habitat giving scope to long distance migration far beyond borders of protected areas in which they live. This has been sporadically documented, both directly and circumstantially.
There are limits to the current methodologies used for studying gharial, primarily rapid assessment surveys to answer specific questions regarding gharial seasonal movements and activities. In addition, it is important to determine the status of the gharial population (numbers, size/sex distributions, densities, etc.) and which particular habitats are required and/or critical to gharial populations.
Monitoring individual gharial is difficult without the use of radio telemetry, a tool widely used by conservation biologists to study a number of aspects of the ecology of many species. The recent mass die-off has shown that the conservation of gharial and effective management of similar situations like the one that arose, is not possible without knowledge of the spatial ecology of gharial.

4. Objectives of the study
1. To monitor seasonal movements and activities, including relevant behaviors, of gharial in affected size/sex classes throughout the annual cycle in the impact and affected areas, related to the recent mass mortality.
2. To identify critical habitats utilized by representative gharial in different seasons in the impact and affected areas.

PROPOSED METHODOLOGY

1. Capture
Gharial will be captured during daylight hours using primarily nylon multifilament set gill ‘Guchaila’ nets with continual surveillance of nets by experienced personnel under the supervision of experts and a veterinarian. Other, well tested, suitable crocodilian capture methods will be employed to supplement netting, as needed. Captures will be conducted main during the pre-monsoon period, but may be extended into the post monsoon period as well.
2. Restraint
Captured animals will be restrained by blind folding, taping jaws, binding of both limb pairs dorsally and finally securing by trained personnel. Animals will be measured and weighed then checked for external parasites and its over-all health status recorded by the veterinary doctor. Animals will be equipped with colored numbered plastic cattle tags to the single whorl tail scutes. Other veterinary samples will be collected where feasible.

3. Radio Attachment
Radio transmitters will be fixed to the caudal flanks on the double crest whorls near their junction with the single crest whorls. During the above operations, animals will be continually monitored and all required steps will be taken to prevent discomfort to the animals from overheating or desiccation. After compliance with the suggested protocol animals will be released at their point of capture.

4. Tracking
Receivers will be installed or deployed with multiple tracking personnel at an appropriate number of accessible tracking points on the river. Animals will be located by triangulation and/or direct observation. Animal locations based on tracking will be plotted on map sheets and environmental data and river flow conditions recorded. The Senior Scientific Advisor and project managers will make frequent visits to the different tracking personnel to monitor progress of the tracking and other studies.

5. Scope for additional studies
Clearly, there is an opportunity to obtain critical new information on the health status of the gharial living in the impact and affected areas during the capture and marking procedures planned for the proposed telemetry study. We have not addressed this aspect of additional veterinary studies in this report, but are mindful of this aspect, and will be willing to cooperate with the attending veterinarian to complete the collection protocols, where feasible, that may be deemed necessary.

RESULTS

1. Methodology and observations

A. Animal capture, restraint, and release
Gharial of the selected size class (2-4m total length) were very difficult to capture, particularly the larger size class (3.5-4m tl), and the present study is based solely on 2.7 - 3.3m adults and sub-adults. The successful capture strategy employed techniques developed by local fishermen, and entailed setting curtains of mesh netting at the deep water approaches to favored basking sites. Animals entangled in nets did not struggle, and consequently nets were checked frequently to avoid injury/drowning. Once secured with rope bindings on the limbs and snout, the captured gharial were remarkably sedate and docile, requiring a minimum of additional restraint, but protection from overheating by providing a large shade canopy and frequent wetting are essential while holding animals for tagging. On several occasions, it was necessary to retain animals for 8-10 hours prior to tagging, and under these conditions, the holding procedure that was used was well tolerated. Upon release, all tagged gharial reacted normally and typically showed defensive behaviors briefly and then bounded for the water and swam away quickly. A qualified veterinarian was on hand and assisted in all capture/tagging procedures.

B. Radio attachment
The rectangular, epoxy encased radio transmitters (60gm, 18x10x8cm) with trailing, flexible whip antenna (30cm) was attached to the base of tail just anterior to the junction of the single/double tail scutes. Stainless steel split rings (3, on bottom edge of each radio) were embedded in epoxy casing and were anchored with Kevlar fishing line that was inserted with the aid of a trochar style, large gauge needle as a guide, underneath the dorsal skin immediately below the bottom of the transmitter. Three strands of line were threaded through holes drilled at the base of the tail scutes on either side of the radio, and then tied to each of the three sets of rings. The knots were dabbed with 5 minute epoxy, and the knots further secured with metal swages, crimped on line ends. Local anaesthetic was available for use ad lib. Radio attachment was completed within 45-60 minutes, and well tolerated by all gharial so treated. In addition, a temperature data logger and visual cattle tags were used to provide individual identification, as well as permanent scute markings.

Figure 1: Picture taken in March, 2009 of the radio attached to animal number: 59, tagged in June, 2008 illustrating the robust nature of the radio attachment procedure followed.

Figure 2: Tail section of Animal Number 57, after attachment of the radio, data logger, and uniquely coded cattle tags. This animal is ready for release.

C. Transmitter function
The transmitters (151 MHz; Advanced Telemetry Systems, USA) were designed to be functional for 2.5-3 years, and under Chambal conditions, have an effective signal range of 0.5-3 km, dependent on local terrain and prevailing weather conditions. Listening posts, on high ground (locally known as a tapu) were established about every 2-3 km along the riverside. Limited vegetation in the river valley and high vantage points facilitated signal reception; maximum reception was >5 km under ideal conditions. Daily observations indicate that specific behaviors and activities of an animal correlated closely with signal strength and signal variation. For example, a gharial swimming can be distinguished from one sitting stationary on land, e.g., basking. Submergence under water results in signal loss at 2-3 m, and continual visual observations while monitoring signal strength confirmed that submerged animals were detectable even when the gharial surfaced for brief periods, e.g., 1-3 minutes. In the dry season when gharial spend hours submerged, monitoring was extended for .5-2.0 hours at listening posts in order to adequately track resident gharial when they surfaced periodically while remaining underwater during midday.
By carefully noting signal variations, a variety of animal activities/behaviors can be detected from signal variation alone, and subsequently confirmed by repeated visual sightings. All of the above protocols have been incorporated into the routine data recorded at each tracking site. The absence of a signal for a 1-3 day period indicated that an animal was likely no longer present in the area. At all listening posts, the trackers scanned all ten frequencies for signals, to prevent bias in anticipating an animal’s whereabouts by selectively tracking only known local residents.

D. Disturbances associated with capture/tagging
Capture/tagging activities in mid March ’09 extended over two weeks and resulted in disturbance at the two capture sites for the following 4-6 weeks and typical/normal behaviours, primarily basking, by gharial at these sites were only resumed by tagged as well as untagged individuals in late April/early May. Following this interruption, tagged gharial resumed association with untagged individuals and regular patterns of activity were exhibited by all resident gharial.
Tracking from listening posts on riverside high ground resulted in minimal/negligible animal disturbance, whereas tracking by boat (technique used initially) was much less productive and appeared to create a much greater disturbance which interfered with radio-location, e.g., gharial submerged on approach, and signal detection was not possible, nor were any visual sightings.
The Chambal gharial populations resident at specific localities appear to be habituated to normal riverside activities, and display finely tuned discrimination abilities when reacting to human activities close to basking and/or nesting sites particularly. Gharial are alert to calls/signals of other sentinel riverbank inhabitants such as shorebirds and wading birds, and typically react to their alarm calls signifying unusual, atypical, often threatening activities. Gharial rapidly head for water if basking, or submerge if in the water until the potential threat wanes or disappears. Habituation to villagers using footpaths, walking with livestock, moving with camels, even crossing shallow stretches of river on foot/camel is evident, and these activities are ignored and not responded to with escape behaviors.
In contrast, the capture-tagging forays to affix radios continued for days, and even residual human activities loosely associated with capture, such as tracking/observing, resulted in daily disturbances to normal patterns of basking and submergence by resident gharial. Frequent major disturbances at some localities appeared to result in resident gharial shifting their “normal” daily locations to nearby, undisturbed areas.
Based on repeated observations reinforcing the summary of disturbance factors (above), the optimum time for capture/tagging would appear to be in the immediate post-monsoon months (Oct-Dec) to avoid interference with important social/reproductive behaviors known to occur from mid January through the pre-monsoon months (May, June, early July) when nesting, hatching, and parental care of young has been observed in Chambal localities.

E. Tracking Methodology
The tracking team, based at Garhaita Village, consisted of 2 experienced local trackers who also operated an inflatable boat with a 25hp OBM, and 2 researchers who worked with the trackers to locate telemetered gharial along a 30km stretch of river which was monitored 3-5 days a week. Local transport was primarily river transects on foot and/or by motorbike. High ground overlooks were located at strategic sites which provided upstream and downstream coverage by utilizing 4 element Yagi antennas as well as 3-element handheld units with portable field receivers (ATS Fieldmaster 100) that provided optimal tracking ranges of 0.5 -3.0km, dependant on local terrain and weather conditions. The tracking field team, consisting of 3 trackers, logged a total of 241 days of the 412 day tracking period. A summary of the tracking effort is presented in Table 1.
GPS readings (Garmin Vista HCX) were taken for animal locations by triangulation on constant signals, and when feasible (ie. when tagged animals were visible), this data was collected by waypoint projections using a compass bearing along with a laser range-finder (Bushnell Sport 450).

F. Tracking effort
One radio-tagged gharial (59) has been monitored for 9 months (June ’08 – Feb ’09 intermittently; followed by 13 months regularly). The ten gharial outfitted with radio transmitters (151 MhZ; individual frequencies) have been tracked for approximately 50% of the total days (2432 of the total gharial days tagged, which were 4120) between release in mid-March and 30th April, 2010. For the ten gharial monitored for 13 months, locations for 1795 daily monitoring gharial days were recorded, for an average of 180 tracking days during the mean 412 days tagged, or approximately 44% of the days monitored. A total of 1812 daily locations were recorded for the ten monitored gharial during the 13-22 months of the study. In addition to daily tracking locations, detailed observations were recorded of environmental parameters, water levels (river) and gharial activity and behaviour, throughout the daylight hours, including morning and afternoon observations. Photos of gharial groupings, including those which included tagged gharial were taken frequently, daily to weekly, to further document gharial locations and habitat usage.

Figure 3: A view of one of the main basking sites, Chilonga, with the tracking team in the foreground. Trackers work alone or in pairs decided by a work plan formulated the night before.

In addition, hand drawn sketches and marked printouts of satellite maps were maintained for the most important basking sandbanks. Observations/tracking effort, consisting of daily forays of 6-10 hours, were seasonally adjusted to accommodate local weather conditions and, importantly, to the seasonal changes in gharial activities – early morning and later afternoon observations during periods characterized by the warmer, dry months (March –July; Sept-Nov) and midday observations during the wet period (July-Sept) and also for the winter months (Nov-Feb).

2. Movement Patterns and Spatial Ecology of Chambal River Gharial
During the dry season/low water conditions, normal activities consisted of loose aggregations of gharial of all sizes at particular deep water areas, pools with riverside sand banks, sand bars and exposed mid-river sand islands. This “clumped” distribution of gharial is characteristic of all months of observation, except the high water/monsoon months of July, August, September and October.

A. Synopsis
The radio-tagged gharial monitored for 13 months (Mar ’09 – Jan ’10) exhibited individually distinct patterns ranged from residency at a single location (61 at Chilonga) to wide-ranging movements upstream as well as downstream, by a gharial (59 at Nakhnoli) whose residency was loosely centred at a mid point 6km below the furthest upstream location, and 10km above the furthest downstream location. The home range of the radio-tagged animals has, for the most part, been within the 30km stretch which was the main study site, although some animals (63 and 49) have been found outside this range. The 3.3m female, 63, has been recorded 22km upstream of Dinnpura and another female, 49, has been recorded about 5km downstream of the Udi bridge.
Summaries of the residency patterns are presented in Table 2, and further details of individual patterns, as well as size estimators during the dry season vs. monsoon months are shown in Table 3.

B. Seasonal trends
Most tagged gharial showed well-defined seasonal patterns of residency, with upstream primary (low water/dry season) location(s) and downstream secondary (high water/monsoon months) residences to which each moved during August-October, and then each returned to its primary residence upstream in subsequent months. Two tagged gharial (49 and 57) varied this seasonal pattern by remaining at downstream locations and/or visiting these during the post-monsoon, dry season as well. Two other gharial (75 and 69) with upstream residencies shifted frequently between their primary residencies and nearby localities, presumably in response to high water fluctuations that inundated mid-river islands at Dinnpura.
Seasonal shifts to monsoon residencies during the high water months of August-Sept-Oct involved shorter distances (4-7km) or longer distances (14-16km), by gharial from dry season primary residencies at Dinnpura as well as those residing at Chilonga.

C. Distance trends
Three gharial tagged at Chilonga had their primary residency at Chilonga, and either didn’t move downstream (61) or made shorter movements to secondary residencies downstream (55 and 63). Three Dinnpura residents (53, 69 and 75) moved shorter distances (7km) to secondary residences while another Dinnpura resident, 51, shifted a longer distance (16km) to its secondary downstream residence.

Two other Chilonga residents (49 and 57) moved downstream and back upstream with less obvious seasonality, involving longer downstream shifts in residency. These gharial appeared to have shifted their dry season residencies in 2009 to locations downstream in 2010, and resided at or nearby their secondary residencies downstream that were occupied during the 2009 monsoon.
The mean for the ten monitored gharial was 10.2 km, but varied from <> 10km. The typical transit patterns are illustrated by the travel narratives of three gharial (51, 57 and 63) which are presented in detail in the sections below.

E. Movement summaries for three selected individuals
To illustrate movement patterns of these three animals, residency and movements patterns have been superimposed on satellite imagery and the resulting outputs have been shown for these three animals (51, 57 and 63). Downstream routes are denoted as yellow lines with downstream stops marked as yellow balloons; upstream routes are denoted as red lines with upstream stops marked as red balloons.

Figure 4: Movement map for Animal Number 51 showing a summary of major movements made from March 2009 to April 2010

i. Movement Summary (2009 - 2010) – ID: 51 (2. 8m Female, captured at Nakhnoli)
This individual (51), a resident of Dinnpura and Akon Ki Mauriyan during the months of May-July, has been tracked for a total of 255 days till date (30/04/10). During the tracked days, it was found on 197 days (or 77% of the time). The total number of days this animal has been tagged is 410 and it has been tracked for 48% of the total number of tagged days.
During the months of May-July, 51 moved from Dinnpura to Akon, a distance of 2.4 km, several times but remained resident in this general area. In early August, 51 made a downstream transit, first to Nakhnoli (6.9 km) and then to Chilonga (5.3 km from Nakhnoli) – a total distance of 12.2 km. Transit time from Nakhnoli to Chilonga was 1 day, and Chilonga was used as a temporary residence for 15 days.
September saw another downstream movement by 51, from Chilonga to Pachai Gaon, a distance of 4.2 km which was covered in a single day. Pachai Gaon was used as a temporary residence for about 4 days. Following the residence at Pachai Gaon, 51 moved back upstream to Chilonga in October, again covering a distance of 4. 2 km. Chilonga was again used as a temporary residence for a further period of 15 days. 51 then moved upstream to Murong and spent 2-3 days resident at this site.
In early November, 51 moved upstream from Murong to Nakhnoli covering a distance of 3.4 km with a transit time of 2-3 days. In mid-late November, 51 again moved upstream, back to its May-July residence just below Dinnpura at Akon and Karot 4.5 km upstream of Nakhnoli.
In late December, 51 moved upstream 2.4 km to Dinnpura and was resident in Dinnpura for 2 days following which there was a 6.9 km transit downstream to Nakhnoli. The downstream movement to Nakhnoli coincided with a rise in water levels and submergence of some basking sites at Dinnpura. 51 has been resident at Nakhnoli and nearby sites just upstream during late January and early February, and then returned to Dinnpura briefly for 3 days before shifting 5 km downstream to Karot where it resided thru all of April. The total distance traveled by 51 over this 13 month period was 54.5 km, the sum of all its recorded transits. It made a minimum of 15 trips, 8 up and 7 downstream (Table 2).

Figure 5: Movement map for Animal Number 57 showing a summary of major movements made from March 2009 to April 2010

ii. Movement Summary (2009 - 2010) – ID: 57 (2.9m Female, captured at Chilonga)
This individual was observed to use the Chilonga basking site fairly exclusively during the months of May, June and July. During this period, the animal was tracked for a total of 57 days and was recorded exclusively at Chilonga (it was not recorded for 12 of the 57 tracking days – it was not found for 21% of the tracking days).
In early August, the animal left Chilonga and moved downstream to another well used basking site at Badpura. The transit time for this move was 5-6 days, and the distance covered was 14.3km. 57 used Badpura as its primary residence for a period of 15-20 days.
In mid-September, 57 moved upstream to a site near the village of Baswara, where it was resident for a period of 10-15 days. This distance travelled over this transit was 6.7 km. In early October, levels of disturbance were observed to increase at the Baswara site, and 57 left Baswara and made another upstream transit to Pachai Gaon, a distance of 3.4 km. The Pachai Gaon site was used as another temporary residence and the animal spent ~15 days at this site.
Late October to early November saw 57 making another downstream transit from Pachai Gaon to Baroli, a distance of 6.9 km with a transit time of about 5 days. Baroli was used as another significant temporary residence site and 57 spent the months of November, December and most of January there.
In late January, 57 left Baroli and moved upstream to Chilonga, with no recorded stops along the route, and over a transit time of 1-2 days. This distance travelled was 11.1 km, and the animal has remained at Chilonga for 3 days, before returning to Baroli to the same locality it had occupied previously. It remained there til mid March, when it shifted downstream 3.2 km to Badpura, stayed there one day, and then returned to Baroli through the rest of March and all of April.
The total distance recorded travelled by 57 over this 13 month period was 66.2 km, the sum of all major transits it made during this time. It made a minimum of 11 trips, 5 upstream and 6 downstream (Table 2).

Figure 6: Movement map for Animal Number 63 showing a summary of major movements made from March 2009 to April 2010

iii. Movement Summary (2009 - 2010) – ID: 63 (3.3m Female, captured at Chilonga)
A female (63), the largest gharial radio-tagged, remained near the capture site (Chilonga) only a few days after release in mid March, and was not located again for 121 days. Then she reappeared at Murong, 1.8km upstream from Chilonga in mid July 2009, after an absence of 4 months.
In 2009, her 121 day absence from mid-March to July corresponded to the period of nesting, incubation and hatching, and may represent a shift to nest elsewhere. However, frequent monitoring attempts to locate her within the 30km river section from Udi Bridge to Dinnpura failed to locate 63 during this period, monitoring of known nesting sites, upstream for 20km and downstream for 16km also failed to detect her on numerous occasions.
Subsequently, she remained at Chilonga continuously, with a high water shift downstream of only 4.2km to Pachi Gaon for 3 weeks, then returned to Chilonga where she has resided with frequent track locations all from Chilonga.
In late February of 2010, she again “disappeared” from Chilonga, her place of residence since mid July 2009 (with limited downstream movement during the monsoon). A concerted effort to locate her near known nesting areas, primarily upstream, did result in definite track locations at Gohera, above Naandagoan, a river distance of 34 km upstream in early March, but she has not been relocated subsequently during the remainder of March and April.

F. Summary of movement patterns observed
The details of individual gharial’s seasonal patterns of residency (dry season vs. monsoon) with respect to the main center of activity, home range size and area estimates, and movement direction and summed movement totals are presented for the ten telemetered gharial in Table 3. Each gharial had a well defined activity center from which it made excursions, typically return trips, periodically. Home ranges consisted of all tracked locations, and were larger during the monsoon months. River lengths (between most distant points of home range) averaged 4.0 km (range 1.3 to 7.3 km) in the dry season vs. 6.5 km (range 3.2 to 10.1 km) during the monsoon. Home range area (river length x river width seasonally) averaged 92 ha (range 38-208) in the dry season vs. 322 ha (range 159-503) during the monsoon. The predominant movement direction was downstream during both seasons. Trip frequency, reflected in summed movements, was not obviously related to either size or extent of home range estimates. Tracker observations strongly suggest that many short trips were directly in response to water level changes (e.g., dam releases innundating basking sites, and/or specific human activities close by basking areas that directly interfered with the daily basking routine).
Although the seasonal patterns of residency summarized here were notably consistent fo all of those gharial monitored, four individuals (59, 57, 49, and 63) showed departures from the general pattern. Two (57 and 49) shifted their dry season residences downstream during 2010, close to where they initially shifted during the monsoon from previously occupied upstream residences. Another (59) had an activity center that didn’t shift seasonally, but tended to move upstream during the dry and downstream during the monsoon. Finally, the largest female (63) disappeared coincident with the nesting/hatching periods in 2009, and again in 2010.

3. Synopsis of daily activities, behaviors, and social/reproductive behaviours

A. Basking
As noted earlier, the daily activities/behaviors of all the gharial observed on this stretch of river are well established and predictable, but vary in major aspects with respect to season. Basking, with an obvious thermoregulatory function, occupies most of the daylight hours during the cooler, winter months (Nov-Mar) and wanes as ambient temperatures (water and air) increase during the warmer, summer months (Apr-Oct). Despite hundreds of hours of observation at major basking sites frequented by gharial of all size/age classes, feeding behavior was rarely observed. Nightime observations were not possible, but limited feeding may occur then. In contrast, feeding was often observed during the monsoon months when gharial are less aggregated and dispersed along shorelines and adjacent flooded channels and backwaters.

B. Social interaction
Social interactions at basking sites were also rarely observed, but likely involve subtle and complex responses to well established social hierarchies. In particular, large juveniles and small subadults (1.5 - 2.5m total length) tend to associate with each other, and have been observed to be approached and chased away from basking groups by larger gharial. But overall, there is little defined separation of habitat usage among all size/age classes.

C. Nesting
Nesting at selected, traditional sites occurs in late March and early April at this locality and is preceded by social groupings during late Jan-early Mar which appear to include one or more ghara-bearing males, and an assemblage of potential nesting females at these sites. Young from the previous year associate closely with each other and have been observed to be attended, even at 9 months of age, by large adults, especially the dominant resident male at Chilonga in Feb-Mar 2010.
Nesing females and/or dominant males at these sites remain close to nests, once these contain eggs, and closely approach intruders and/or potential predators of eggs/hatchlings. Once nests hatch, at sites containing multiple hatchling groups, hatchlings have been observed to form exceptionally large groups, >120 individuals, closely attended by one or more adults (female and/or male), presumed to be parents. In contrast to all other settings, adults tend to remain vigilant and decidedly more visible when attending hatchling groups, and tolerate close approach and may even exhibit defensive, aggressive behaviors toward intruders in response.

4. Nests monitored and reproductive success

In an effort to further evaluate the health of the Chambal River gharial population under study, e.g. its reproductive success, nest monitoring was done whenever possible during 2009, and systematically during the 2010 season to date. These observations include river stretches from Pinahat to Sashon Ghat, and encompassed 3 survey segments (~100 km river distance). In 2009, at least 20 trial nests were observed, and successful hatching was recorded for at least 10 nests located at 5 localities. No obvious abnormalities and/or nest failures were noted at any of these sites.
In 2010, nesting effort was monitored on the same stretches of river. As of end of April, a total of 14 nests were recorded, of which 2 were predated. Nest surveys will be continued as long as possible pre-monsoon to provide additional data on nesting effort and nest success.

5. Population counts and composition in the study area

A. Trends
Total population estimates in the study area at six localities frequented by resident radio-tagged gharial are presented in Table 4. The maximum number of gharial in various size/age/sex categories at each site in 2009 and in 2010 is based daily counts on > 20 days taken at peak basking time under favorable weather conditions. Sizes were estimated based on markers on basking beaches and further refined by calibrating size estimates using telemetered gharial (of known size) in basking groups. Only data from undisturbed groups were included in tally, and single animals/isolated small groups were not included in these counts. Consequently, these counts may not be directly compared with boat/bankside surveys which tally total counts for specific river stretches.

B. Encountering of Telemetred individuals
Telemetered gharial monitored during this study were evident in most counts at all localities, dependent on an individual’s residence patterns and associated movements. It is important to note here that detailed daily observations of the ten radio-equipped gharials indicate that not every gharial “basks” or moves onto land on every single day, and often telemetered gharial were detected by signal strength to be located nearby basking groups, but simply were not on land and not visible to be included in these daily counts. As many as three radioed gharial (at Dinnpura, and at Chilonga) were known to be present based on signal strength and position, but not visible, accounting for 30-50% of the total population observed to be on land and included in daily counts.

C. Overview
The number and age/size composition of gharial residing at each basking locality, based on these popultion counts, indicate: 1) stable numbers of gharial are found aat specific localities within a seasonal period, and also from year to year, 2) the distribution of size/age classes strongly suggest that reproduction and annual recruitment of appropriate age/sze classes is occurring, and 3) if telemetered gharial are representative with respect to their residency/movements, then most gharial observed at a given locality are seasonal residents as well, with well-defined seasonal patterns of movement.

DISCUSSION

1. Assessment of health and status of gharial in impact and affected areas

The Focus of this study has been on gharial populations in a 30km stretch of the affected area, utilizing ten telemetred residents gharial in conjunction with total population counts, augmented with nesting observations in the impact/affected areas.
The results presented in this report indicate:

i. Population composition (size/age class distributions at selected basking sites) is normal in comparison with previous annual boat surveys conducted prior to the die-off
ii. Likewise, nesting and hatching observations in 2009-1010 indicate that reproduction in these populations is normal. There is no evidence from our study of any abnormalities and/or nest failure in 2009-2010 to date
iii. There is no evidence of any sick/dying gharial during this study, and no “abnormal” behaviour and/or activities were exhibited by any gharial in this study
iv. No additional veterinary assessments of gharial health were conducted in conjunction with this study, due to funding and logistical constraints

2. Evaluation of hypotheses about causes/scenarios explain mass-mortality of gharial in the NCS

i. Gharial under study showed well defined residence patterns, restricted to approximately 5km of river length, irrespective of season. During the monsoon months, the river length and area/extent of residences increased (by ~33-50%), but monsoon residencies remained well-defined and predictable.
ii. Residency shifted 5-20km downstream for radioed gharial, during the highwater period, “failed” monsoon of 2009, with a single exceptional animal that moved upstream as well as downstream.
iii. Current scenarios explaining the die-off suggest that gharial residing in the Chambal moved downstream to the Chamba-Yamuna confluence and resided there during the 2007 monsoon. Some of these individuals may have moved upstream some distance into the Yamuna river, as was observed post-dieoff in the 2008 monsoon.
iv. The results of this study strongly suggest that the affected gharial in the current scenario were likely established residents in the immediate area with 5-20km upstream of the confluence. This may explain why the die-off was apparently greatest in the impact area vs. other area further upstream in the Chambal and/or downstream in the Yamuna.
v. Feeding on a regular basis by gharial appears to be restricted primarily to the monsoon months of high water. The occurrence of the die-off in winter months of Dec – Mar (2007-2008) suggests that the consequence of exposure to presumed toxins in the Yamuna was delayed for months and/or accelerated by low winter temperatures. At present, a definitive cause for the 2007-2008 mass mortality even has not been established.
vi. The 2009 monsoon was not “normal” but occurred late with minimal rainfall and consequent high water, so the wet season responses of gharial, particularly monsoon movements and season shifts in residence patterns, remain poorly documented. Consequently, the results of this study to date have limited relevance to current scenarios to explain the die-off.

3. Determining the value of telemetry for ecological information relevant to long-term gharial
conservation

i. Identify critical habitats used by individual gharial throughout the year, both dry season and monsoon. In the present study, river stretches of 5-20km are utilized by gharial observed at a specific locality.
ii. Delineate existing gharial populations in relation to the critical habitats they require, and characterize these with respect to age/size/sex grouping, including social determinants of gharial spatial ecology
iii. Design rigorous survey methodologies to accurately census known, established gharial populations, as well as develop reliable rapid assessment techniques.
iv. Document how existing gharial populations respond to natural environmental changes, and, in particular, react to potential man-made disturbances.
v. Study important behaviours, such as prolonged parental care of young, which should provide useful guidelines for release/reintroduction schemes
vi. Evaluate the success, cost-effectiveness and appropriate time of year for release/reintroduction schemes that involve various ongoing activities such as egg collection, hatchling rearing, head-starting, and juvenile release.
vii. Using “adaptive management”, develop appropriate and effective in-situ management strategies, such as nest protection, targeted habitat protection/restoration, mitigation of man-made disturbances, and other strategies that aim to augment existing gharial populations and their critical habitat.

4. Procurement of essential data for a comprehensive species recovery plan in NCS

Gharial respond to changes in the local environment by shifting residence on a seasonal basis (dry season vs. monsoon) and/or in response to specific events, eg. Direct human disturbances, water level alterations, etc. In this regard, the integrity and continuity of the river channel or an all essential movement “corridor”, unimpeded and unrestricted, is critical to the continued health, well-being, and survival of Chambal river populations of gharial. The present study indicates that adequate water flow is necessary for maintenance of deep water pools and movements between pools via sufficient shallow water channels between pools.
Access to river flow data would be of extreme value to the meaningful analysis of home range data and general ecological data, and would be key to the formulation of any new gharial management plan for the NCS.
Telemetry studies of gharial spatial ecology will also be a necessary component in studies to:
i. Quantify river features which are vital and critical to the gharial’s continued survival in NCS, in particular water quality and water flow regimes integral to river ecology.
ii. Quantify seasonal features of river ecology, such as access to shallow water and the continued presence of healthy aquatic prey, particularly native fish species.
iii. Identify man-made disturbances, asses their impacts/threats, and quantify levels of disturbance which are tolerated as well as those which are not.

RECOMMENDATIONS

On the basis of the results of this study, the following recommendations are made:

i. Continue studies now underway for at least two additional years, 2011 and 2012 so that gharial ecology, especially movements and residency patterns can be further documented through a “normal” monsoon wet season and following dry season. In addition, larger size classes, 3 - 5m adults, should also be radio-tagged and monitored as well. Gharial now tagged should be refitted with radios for telemetric studies through 2010.
ii. Current efforts should be augmented and strengthened with additional staffing and logistics. Behavioural/observational studies should be increased and expanded, and night observations permitted wherever and whenever feasible.
iii. Similar studies utilizing radio-telemetry should be initiated in representative gharial populations in one or more other river segments of NCS in order to establish a broad database for a comprehensive species recovery plan and consequent effective management of gharial in the NCS.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank everyone who has helped make this study a continuing success, and would like to particularly thank the following individuals and organizations for their contributions:
Dr. Anmol Kumar, MOEF
Mr. B.K.Patnaik, UPFD
Dr. H.S. Pabla, MPFD
Staff of the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department
Staff of the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department
Mr. Neeraj Kumar, UPFD
Mr. Pankaj Kumar
Mr. Anand Kumar
Dr. Gowri Mallapur
Rogier Van Rossem
Mr. Shailendra Singh
Mr. Ravi Singh, WWF-India
Dr. Parikshit Gautham, WWF-India
Mr. Romulus Whitaker
Ms. Janaki Lenin

THIS PROJECT WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE BUT FOR THE VERY GENEROUS GRANTS FROM THE FOLLOWING ORGANIZATIONS:

SAN DIEGO ZOOLOGICAL PARK
ZOO PRAHA
OCEAN PARKS CONSERVATION FOUNDATION
THE RUFFORD MAURICE LIANG FOUNDATION
CLEVELAND METROPARKS ZOO

Turtles find friends in poachers

2010-06-08T13:30:00.008+05:30

World Turtle Day in India witnessed a success when again a cadre of turtle poachers gave up commercial harvesting of turtles from the Ghaghra-Sarju river system in the Tarai (foothills of Himalaya along Indo-Nepal border). The turtle poacher conversion workshop, held at Ghaghraghat along Ghaghra River, was the result of many days of hard negotiating by project coordinator, Shailendra Singh, just to make contact with the poachers and represents a significant step towards finding sustainable solutions to the Indian turtle conservation crisis.

The Ghaghra-Sarju river system along Tarai supports one of the few remaining populations of Crowned River Turtles (Hardella thurjii), Indian Narrow headed Soft-shell Turtle (Chitra indica), Indian Eyed Turtle (Morenia petersii) and spotted pond turtles (Geoclemys hamiltoni) along with other soft-shell turtles such as Nilssonia gangeticus and N. hurum. Soft-shell turtle species are extensively hunted for the commercial trade of calipee (outer cartilaginous rim) and meat throughout north India while hard-shell turtle species like Hardella and Geoclemys are killed for local consumption. Significant numbers of turtles are also accidentally caught and killed every year in fishing equipment such as nylon nets. Besides the species status and trade assessments, these TSA-MCBT India Turtle Program meetings have been working for the last three years to convert turtle poachers and to find ways to provide them with alternative livelihoods such as eco-friendly micro-enterprises.

Thirty five people participated in the meeting which lasted several hours due to a number of heated discussions ranging from local socioeconomics to global conservation. Over 80% of the participants finally agreed to work with the project team and signed a pledge not to commercially harvest freshwater turtles from the area.

A series of follow-up meetings will be held in this region in the near future to pebble the path towards forming several “River Conservation Committees” for critical stretches along the river course. Under the aegis of TSA-MCBT program, such committees will include the ex-turtle poachers, fishermen (who use eco-friendly fishing methods), local community leaders and regional conservation NGOs. These committees will initially advise on local turtle conservation measures and possible alternative livelihood options for poachers but it is hoped that they will eventually take the lead in community based turtle conservation.

Saltwater crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus) in the Andaman Islands

2010-05-13T15:09:00.015+05:30

A brief analysis of the recent incident of crocodile attack at Havelock Island

The incident:
The tragic death of Ms. Lauren Failla, an American national, on the 28th of April 2010 (at about 1615 hrs) by crocodile predation, was considered to be an extremely unlikely event given that it took place in open water over a coral reef, in an area lacking any mangrove refuge in the vicinity. The location was Neil’s cove off Radhanagar beach (no.7), the most popular beach in the Andaman Islands where no crocodile has ever been sighted before.
The incident has been discussed with a number of knowledgeable field biologists and the consensus is that the crocodile responsible for this predation event, based on the description given by the sole witness, Mr. Ajit Singh Chadha, subsequent viewing of the video (he dropped his camera to go to the aid of the victim and it continued to record as it sank to the bottom), and sightings of the crocodile over the following days, was a medium sized (3.5m/12 foot) male crocodile (males are known to grow to 6m/20feet in length), which had recently moved into the area. Salt water crocodiles are generally quite secretive/discreet creatures and prefer the security of mangroves or other thick coastal vegetation by day and emerge to hunt by night.
In this unusual case the crocodile’s nearest likely refuge would be the mangrove creek of ‘Char Narial’ about 9km southeast of Neil’s Cove. The other, less likely possibility is that it ranged from the No.6 creek, which opens on the northern side of Havelock. The nearest substantial crocodile habitation in the main Andaman Islands, is Baratang which lies 14 km to the west across open sea.
During the 48 hours following the incident, extensive searches (by divers and in dinghies) for the body of the victim resulted in locating the camera of the witness, on which images confirmed the crocodile predation. The body, with obvious bite marks on the neck, was subsequently located on the evening of April 30th about 3 kilometres east of where the incident took place. The search party also reported a medium sized crocodile in the sea just offshore and in the absence of any other crocodile in the vicinity was assumed to be the one responsible for the attack. Another crocodile was located in Creek no. 6 on the northern side of the island, which is quite intensely used by both fishermen and kayakers. This is the first record of possible ‘resident’ saltwater crocodiles on Havelock Island.
Attempts to capture the crocodile seen close to the body of Ms Failla have been unsuccessful due to rough seas of the impending monsoon and the fact that the animal is not ‘resident’ at a location, such as in one of the creeks, where traps can be set,. At the time of writing this report the crocodile has not been sighted for several days and unless it starts making regular use of one of the creeks to avoid choppy open water (which crocodiles are apt to do) as the monsoon advances the chances of capturing it will become dimmer.

Past Research:
The authors and colleagues have been sporadically looking at the saltwater crocodile population in the Andaman Islands since 1976. At that time nesting sites in North Andaman (once a stronghold of the species) were surveyed and the first nest of saltwater crocodile eggs collected for the fledgling crocodile rehabilitation program of the FAO/UNDP/GOI. It was ascertained that at the time, crocodile populations throughout India (where three species occur) were under severe pressure due to hunting and habitat loss (in the case of fresh water mugger crocodiles and the salt water crocodile) or on the edge of extinction, as in the case of the riverine gharial crocodile.

Andaman Crocodiles:
Crocodile hunters and egg collectors were interviewed in the Andaman Islands and information gleaned from historical literature on the islands. It is obvious that by the 1970s Andaman crocodiles were in serious decline with adults killed for their skins, fat and gall bladders and the nests robbed for eggs as food by the new settlers in the islands. This killing was locally ‘sanctioned’ because of the several deaths and injuries due to crocodiles, particularly in North Andaman.
In the late 1970s, the Wildlife Protection Act was enforced in the islands and the salt water crocodile given the highest order of protection (Schedule I). This resulted in a decline of killing by locals, however poachers from Burma and Thailand continued to kill and capture crocodiles. Aside from the Andamans and Nicobars, the only significant population of saltwater crocodiles in India is at Bhitarkanika National Park in Orissa. This means that the island population is particularly important for the species survival and ecologically important as the major predator in the ecosystem.

Crocodile Surveys and conflict mitigation measures:
In recent surveys (1990s), it became apparent that crocodile populations in some parts of the islands (notably Middle Straits, Baratang, Yeratta, west coast of Middle Andaman, Austin creek) were recovering. A few instances of crocodile predation on local people were reported from North Bay, Sippighat (in Port Blair), Middle Straits and Little Andaman at this time. The Forest Department was equipped with a net trap based on the design used in Australia and some effort was made to sensitise settlers to the possibility of crocodile-human conflict. A collaborative project on Human/Crocodile Conflict (HCC), funded by the United Nations Development Programme and Global Environment Fund was recently begun by the Madras Crocodile Bank and Andaman and Nicobar Islands Forest Department.

Ritchie’s Archipelago:
There have been no systematic crocodile surveys and documentation done in the islands of Ritchie’s Archipelago in recent years, but anecdotal reports, now brought to light, indicate that crocodiles have been sighted in the dense mangrove creeks of John Lawrence and Outram Islands (both part of Ritchie’s Archipelago), several kilometres north of Havelock. However, there have been no reports or even documented historical evidence of crocodiles at Havelock Island – the focus of tourist activities in the archipelago.

Discussion:
The fact that an adult crocodile was swimming in open water in broad daylight and attacked a snorkeler was initially extremely difficult for anyone to believe and seemed highly unlikely, especially considering the perceived depleted status of crocodiles in the Andamans and the fact that crocodiles have not been seen in this particular area before. Now that the attack is confirmed and the fact that what appears to be the same crocodile remained in the vicinity for two days, indicates that this is likely to be a recent migrant to Havelock Island from other, more suitable crocodile areas within the island group.
There has been much speculation, some sensible and some irrational, both in the local and international press as well as online in various e-groups. It is important to keep the facts straight so that such an incident will not happen again. Australia has been dealing with an expanding population of saltwater crocodiles over the past few decades and has successfully minimized the potential danger to tourists and indeed has made crocodiles a tourism icon of the Northern Territory and Queensland. Tourism continues to be booming in northern Australia despite the presence of literally thousands of saltwater crocodiles there. We would do well to learn from their experience.

Recommendations:
The best thing we can do, both for crocodiles as well as for the future of tourism in the Andaman and Nicobars is to learn from this tragic experience and move forward with an intelligent and well planned approach.
It is clear that we are looking at a severely depleted population of saltwater crocodiles, which is now recovering in the Andaman Islands due to increased protection and public awareness of wildlife laws.
With any conservation success concerning large predators, the chances of conflict developing are very high. At this point in time considering the rapid development of tourism in this part of the island group, it is essential that we gain a complete understanding of the population dynamics, distribution and ranges of saltwater crocodiles in the Andamans. There are several actions, already set in motion with the A&N Forest Department, which will help to minimize and contain any further such tragic occurrences:
1. Basic day and night-time crocodile population censuses, initially concentrating on Ritchie’s Archipelago and other major tourism zones such as Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park, Wandoor.
2. Based on survey results it is necessary to design and implement a research and monitoring program with crocodilian experts, incorporating capture/mark and release studies and radio-telemetry. Involvement of fishermen and local tour operators is useful for information gathering.
3. Train and equip for rapid response a “Crocodile Squad” with the Wildlife Division of the Department of Environment and Forests, Andaman and Nicobar Islands to capture the occasional nuisance crocodile, which may move into an area already occupied by tourism development. Since translocation is not an option (due to the long-range homing instincts of crocodiles), captivity or euthanasia are the only options for these captured animals.
4. Develop guidelines and awareness materials for tour operators, fishermen and the general public along the lines of the “living with the crocodile” program which has been operative in northern Australia since the period of crocodile recovery there in the late 1970s. Devices such as shark nets to protect beaches, dissemination of crocodile movement information and other measures need to be examined.
Rom Whitaker, Honorary Member, Steering Committee, IUCN/SSC Crocodile Specialist Group

Dr. Patrick Aust, Director Madras Crocodile Bank/Centre for Herpetology

Nikhil Whitaker, Curator, Madras Crocodile Bank/Centre for Herpetology

Andaman and Nicobar Islands Environmental Team/Madras Crocodile Bank Trust, Post Bag 1, Junglighat, Port Blair, Andaman Islands 744101
Email: contactanet@gmail.com or mcbtindia@gmail.com
Phone: 03192 280081 (ANET); 044 2747 2447 (MCBT)
May 7, 2010

References:
ANDREWS, H. V. 1999. Status of Saltwater Crocodiles in the Andaman Archipelago. ENVIS -Wildlife and Protected Areas. Bi-annual Bulletin. Wildlife Institute of India, Dehra Dun, India. 2(1): 38 – 43.

ANDREWS, H. V. & WHITAKER R. 1994. Status of the saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus Schneider, 1801) in North Andaman Island. Hamadryad 19: 79-92.

WHITAKER, N. 2009. Capacity building in capture, human/crocodile conflict mitigation and survey techniques of saltwater crocodile in the Andaman Islands for Forest Department personnel. MCBT Report for the A&N Forest Department and UNDP/GEF funded human/crocodile conflict project, India.

WHITAKER N. & NAIR, T. 2008. Survey of human/crocodile conflict in the Andaman Islands: Hut Bay, Little Andaman. MCBT Report for the A&N Forest Department and UNDP/GEF funded human/crocodile conflict project, India.

WHITAKER, R. & WHITAKER, Z. 1978. A preliminary survey of the saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) in the Andaman Islands. J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc. 76: 311-325.

An hour in the "hole"; a non-herp related story. By Nikhil Whitaker

2010-02-19T10:24:00.008+05:30

It was time to get some major rewiring done down at my house, so the foundation had been dug up. There was a 4 foot hole outside the kitchen door, accessed by 7 steps, as our house is elevated. One night, whilst heading up to our communal kitchen for dinner, I tripped over a step where I had left my sandals, and fell on the ground, only to find I could'nt get up! I was in the hole, and man what a hole it was considering my angular position. My lower back and head were in the deep area, whilst my legs were sticking up in the air. I couldnt move, but I could make a phone call to get someone to haul me out. So I pulled out my phone, which promptly dissapeared as I was clawing at the ground above me which brought down a foot or so of sand.

Now THATS when I started freaking out, just a little bit. What if a krait fell in with me? Or a Russel's viper? What if tiny red ants started to eat me from the outside in, and I became a mere skeleton (literally) of myself like one of those poor guys who you see in the old wild west movies, going gold prospecting but not taking enough water and food with them. What if a pack of rabid stray dogs attacked? Or huge bandicoots? Damn I wished I had'nt read all those Steven King books.

This is when I discovered, I was going to have to yell for help. For an hour, I yelled out the names of everyone I knew on campus, Soham and Akanksha (they were out in Chennai), Doc Gowri (too far away to hear), and some other names of people that were'nt even around at the time, I think. Finally, I saw a beam of light, and one of our watchmen, Hoon Bahadur, came and stood by the hole for a couple of seconds, perhaps trying to take in what exactly, and who exactly (by then I had everything from sand to casuarina leaves adorning my person), was in there. He then recognized me, and with one hand this little guy pulled me straight out. I thanked him profusely in a jibber of tamil/hindi, and went and had a shower.

Various aches and pains from my experience remained for a week though, and I get weird looks when I give somewhat anxious glances at large holes in the ground.

Book Review: VENOMOUS SNAKES OF ASIA by Gernot Vogel

2009-11-10T12:19:00.002+05:30

Reviewed by Rom Whitaker

The first volume in their series ‘Chimaira Terralog’ on venomous snakes of the world, 'Venomous Snakes of Asia' is probably the first book which brings together good pictures of most of Asia’s venomous species. Text is at a minimum in this series, but a lot of effort has been made to find even the most obscure species, some of which have probably not been seen in print before. Most of the photographs are clear, sharp and adequate with a few preserved museum specimens of species rarely encountered. My only criticism would be that more attention needs to be paid to colour correction at the printing stage for both this volume and the following companion volume 'Venomous Snakes of Africa'.

Asia is a special place for kraits and coral snakes, the majority of them almost completely unknown, be it ecology, breeding biology or venom toxicity/effects. Hopefully a book like this will stimulate work on these medically important snakes. There are eleven species of cobras including several ‘spitters’ and of course the king cobra, which with its huge range and variation is likely to be separated into half a dozen species once its phylogenetic complexities are worked out.

Asia has relatively few vipers but a plethora of at least 90 species and subspecies of pit vipers! These are every photographer’s dream snake, they will often just sit there and pose, a gently nudge with a thin twig will reposition the head just so it catches a shaft of sunlight. In fact one Malabar pit viper we encountered on a pathside rock in the Western Ghats of South India was still on the same rock a week later (though it seemed to have moved its head slightly). One mistake I caught was the labeling of Trimeresurus labialis from the Andaman Islands (p.100); as far as we know it is endemic to the Nicobar Islands. Missing from the repertoire is the pit viper ubiquitous to the Andamans: Anderson’s pit viper.

'Venomous Snakes of Asia' bridges the gap between a popular photo guide and a serious scientific contribution to the herpetology of Asia. It is an extremely useful aid both for the naturalist visiting Asia for the first time as well as for the old timer who has not been lucky enough yet to encounter the Andaman cobra or Maclelland’s coral snake.

This book is also clearly aimed at the herpetoculturist with each species photograph accompanied by a series of symbols to indicate recommended terrarium size, ecology, climate, activity cycle, behaviour and diet. For the non-specialist it would have been convenient if the common names for each species (shown in the Contents) were also on the photo captions.

'Venomous Snakes of Asia' deserves a place on every Asian naturophile’s bookshelf.

Edition Chimaira, Germany, 2006.
Text (German and English): 17pp
Photographs: 131pp

An old gharial who learnt a new trick

2009-10-27T16:24:00.001+05:30

By Soham Mukherjee

Visitors to the Croc Bank would know, sometimes to their annoyance, that little egrets, night herons, cormorants and pond herons nest on the trees that shade the crocs. Ravi Sankaran, the ornithologist, declared Croc Bank to be one of the few natural perennial heronries in these parts and we have jovially considered renaming the place, the Madras Bird Bank.

On the morning of 2nd September 2009, in pen # 24 (a.k.a. temple turtle pond), a fledgling little egret was walking on partially submerged stones and didn’t seem to know that stones usually do not move. WHAM! The resident male gharial snapped it up despite being handicapped. (He lost the tip of his upper jaw in a fight with another male a few years ago!) The gharial’s reaction may have been instinctive. I have seen the same animal snap at other dumb birds that made the fatal mistake of stepping on his august head before. On those previous occasions, he had spat out the offending remains, leaving it for me, the Assistant Curator, to clean up after him.

I stood poised with my camera, expecting to get a shot of the inevitable spit. Instead, the gharial started swallowing the bird! In my hurry to switch the camera to video mode, I jammed it. By the time I jiggled it back to life, the gharial had already made a meal of the bird. You can be sure that my camera moves will be smoother next bird fledgling season!

The gharial is reputed to live off fish almost exclusively. There is anecdotal historical information of human carcasses, parts of a donkey and other mammalian parts found in its stomach.

Meet the Staff: Director, Patrick Aust

2009-09-28T19:01:00.019+05:30

Photo: Rom Whitaker

Growing up years…

I was born in Zimbabwe in 1975. I’m the last of three children. My father was involved in the bush war and because he was in the army, it was tricky. So in 1980, we moved to South Africa for eight years for a cool-off period. After returning to Zimbabwe, I attended a rural bush school called Falcon College where natural history activities were encouraged. This was a great time for me. I had the good fortune of studying under the late Ron Hartley who taught me the unique art of ‘crazy bushman biologist falconer’. (What's this? Quintessentially a Zimbabwean thing - to merge hard science with hunter-gatherer skills to garner some of the finest falconry (and fun) on earth. I flew a neurotic black sparrowhawk called Shaky; he was a legend.) I returned to South Africa after school to attend university in Peitermaritzburg. City life never agreed with me and I ended up completing my BSc and BSc Honours degrees part time whilst working back in Zimbabwe. Initially during this period I worked on our family farm and as a ‘gap year’ teacher at my old school – a very fun and care free time in my life.

One fine day I got a phone call from family friends offering me a job in the southeastern lowveld of Zimbabwe. The lowveld is a semi-arid part of the world where wildlife and cattle ranching are the main commercial activities. The job was to run a project on African wild dogs. For three and half years I monitored the regional population, conducted education and awareness programs as well as carried out my own research for my studies. In 2000, the turmoil caused by land reform began in Zimbabwe. Over the course of the next few years our family farm and many of the wildlife ranching areas where I was working were overrun with so-called war veterans. By the end of 2003, I had had enough and decided to take an extended holiday abroad.

Soon after arriving in the UK I once again realized that urban life was too much for me. A couple of months later, I got a job in Botswana running a project on wild dogs in the Okavango swamps for Tico McNutt. My main task was to survey the status of wild dogs in northeastern Botswana but I also spent many enjoyable days monitoring the collared packs in Moremi Game Reserve. Shortly after arriving in Botswana, I made friends with Michael Fay. One of my passions was the rainforests of Central Africa and he found me a job there with Wildlife Conservation Society.

I conducted a short survey of lions in the remote Bateke plateau region of the Congo. Historically lions occurred in this forest savanna mosaic but relentless hunting during the colonial period decimated the population, and since then there have been only a few unsubstantiated sightings. My job was to confirm whether there was a remnant population in an effort to bolster the case for a new National Park in this area. As it turned out we never did find any lions and the evidence suggested that they had gone extinct sometime in the recent past. At this time one of my many applications seeking a scholarship to do a Ph.D. came through. A full scholarship from the Beit Trust saw me back in the UK at Imperial College London where I joined the lab of the biologist guru, Prof. Tim Coulson.

All my life I have been interested in reptiles but making a career in that field is not always easy. So although I dabbled in large mammals, I was seeking an opportunity to get back to reptiles. The Ph.D. gave me that opportunity and I went to work on crocodiles.

Earliest memories of reptiles…

I’ve never really had a mentor in my reptile career. That’s been a big sore point. Most of what I know is self-taught. So I may be wrong by the textbook but I try to keep it quiet… (laughs) Like all small boys you start with herps at a very young age, catching chameleons and frogs, etc. Living in a country with pretty rich herpetofauna lends itself to this. I was 12 when I started catching snakes in earnest. That was in the eastern province of South Africa, in the then Transkie. In those days this area was classified as homeland and we lived there for some years. I started keeping snakes in metal trunks with soil…it was really a disaster. Then we moved to Durban for a while which is fantastic for snakes. My parents built me a snake room when I was about 15. I jammed it floor to ceiling with snakes, turtles, lizards. Snakes were definitely my main interest though. For a time I volunteered at the Fitzsimmons Snake Park but our move back to Zimbabwe put an untimely end to building on this opportunity.

Our family was interested in wildlife; our holidays were always spent in game reserves. Although they weren’t into herps, they didn’t discourage it. If I brought a snake home, they’d make an effort to be encouraging “Ooh, that’s very nice”.

How did you choose your study site for your Ph.D.?

I was originally going to do it in Mozambique. Then I got permission to work in Zambia. But just before I set off, I got in touch with Chris Brown who was the director of a sustainable use NGO in Namibia called the Namibia Nature Foundation. He had just campaigned for the downlisting of Namibian crocodiles from Appendix 1 to Appendix 2, and was looking for someone to do some research on crocodiles, particularly the crocodile conflict problem. Because of that, the logistical support they were willing to offer me was considerable. One of the big hurdles in setting up a field project was transportation - a vehicle and a boat - and they offered me those 2 things. That was the deciding factor and that’s how I wound up in Namibia.

Part of the reason I got the scholarship was because I wanted to investigate the concept of sustainable use of reptiles. South Africa has a long history of commercially managing wildlife, particularly large mammals. I always felt that reptiles were overlooked and their potential was untapped. Nobody seemed interested in the huge tracts of land where large mammals had been wiped out although they had fantastic populations of reptiles.

Were large mammals hunted out?

It was combination of hunting, habitat loss, agriculture, disturbance. Now-a-days worldwide, large mammals are mostly confined to protected areas. That’s very much the case in Zimbabwe, which has vast areas of what they call “communal land”. That’s really where I wanted to look. Also worth mentioning here, is that my interests are larger than just reptiles. I’m fascinated by community development, rural land use systems, traditional methods of utilization of wildlife resources. Many of my fondest memories of growing up are of hunting and fishing with local villagers and just sitting around a fire talking with the old men. So my project combined all my primary interests.

What were the findings of your project?

Prior to my study, the feeling was that the crocodile conflict situation was pretty much one way: crocodiles were killing humans and their livestock. Since uncontrolled hunting had been stopped, the population was thought to be huge, they were out of hand, there were crocodiles everywhere. They were perceived as vermin. That was partly the reason for downlisting the species from CITES Appendix 1 to 2.

Namibia has a very pro-active community development scheme. The government lends a very careful ear to what people want and at this point, they wanted crocodiles out. So besides looking at the population, I looked at the feasibility of some kind of community harvest system. I realized that the conflict was going both ways and it was incredibly dynamic. Although the crocodile population was large and there were a lot more of them than there had been in recent decades, things were changing quickly. The situation along the riverbanks made it difficult for crocodiles to sustain that number and it looked like it was going to start crashing again. The baby boom generation of the 70s had matured, and in that process had moved from eating fish to mammals. When I arrived, there were many large crocodiles feeding on terrestrial prey but not only were they not breeding successfully, they were getting killed. There was quite a lot of illegal killing as well as drowning in nets and so on.

Namibia, and particularly the North East where I was working, has a history of civil unrest which only stabilized fairly recently, after Independence. The riverbanks were rapidly filling up with new and growing communities. The overall finding was that the crocodile population was potentially going to fall off a precipice. And one of the big concerns I highlighted was that although there were a lot of protected areas in this part of Namibia, they were mostly bordering rivers. Few protected areas actually straddle rivers so crocodiles are always vulnerable. The pressure on the rivers is constant throughout the whole course. Because of that, crocodiles had a less certain future than some of the more charismatic animals such as lions and hyenas which at least had a core protected area where no one could get them. Crocodiles had no real safe refuge. The river area was a frontline of conflict. Fishing and other freshwater pressures are just as much on the border of a National Park as they were in completely unprotected areas. So the important finding was that, particularly in Namibia, there are crocodiles killing a lot of people and cattle but humans were also killing crocodiles, either directly or indirectly. A management strategy had to be developed quickly if things were to look up.

Did your study have an impact on bureaucrats and decision-makers?

I’d like to say it did but these things take a long time in reality. It’s the planting of a seed.

What were your recommendations?

My recommendation was to take the zoning approach to crocodile management. One big area is fully protected, called Mamili swamp, the end point of the Kwando River. My recommendation was to zone the whole of northeastern Namibia according to the percentage of crocodile habitat that was protected. If both banks of a river have protected areas, then that should be treated as a completely hands-off area, where ecological processes are allowed to carry on. In areas where one bank is protected, sustainable harvests can be allowed with the benefits going directly to the people who live in those areas. These are the people who are most likely experiencing continued high levels of human-crocodile conflict because there will naturally be higher populations of crocodiles in the vicinity of National Parks. Areas where neither bank is protected should have intensive management programs, literally off-take all animals over a certain size. Since there are a lot of safari operations, tourist lodges in these areas, the benefit would be to open up the river for water sports (such as water skiing, wind surfing) which is a huge attraction.

So there is no future for crocs outside Protected Areas?

Protected Areas are essential to safeguard populations of crocodiles. You need clever management outside of those areas which is market driven to get people and crocodiles to live together indefinitely. When there are protected areas and wildlife tourism it works quite well; it becomes part and parcel of a wider utilization of natural resources by the communities. When there are no protected areas and there is only agriculture, large crocodiles are always going to be a problem. You are never going to be able to protect them until the whole education/development program kicks in. Until such time, there is no point having a crocodile conservation program in those areas.

What’s the wildlife situation in Zimbabwe now?

I may be wrong but I think Zimbabwe has lost 70% of its wildlife in the last 10 years. That’s because there was a massive population of wildlife living on private land. Literally all that private land has gone now. When agriculture came to an end, the level of poverty skyrocketed and people have been living off the animals. It’s a dire situation. Rhino poaching has taken off again and is back to critical levels. Even the most secure populations are being hammered. It’s not going to get better anytime soon because there is a huge population below the poverty line and they are obviously the priority. We haven’t even started the regeneration process, bringing those people up. The infrastructures are just not there; they are not going to be there for the foreseeable future. It’s going to take a long time. By the time we can start looking at how to manage our wildlife, I fear there will be very little of it left. It is sad, I’m perhaps looking at the glass half-empty. In such situations in Africa, wildlife comes off second-best and it’s a resource that is totally, totally undervalued because they have had so much of it for so long. People will not believe that an impala can go extinct. “eh? No way”. A lot of these people have seen hundreds of elephants all their lives and it’s so difficult when you try to explain to them that this is an animal that needs to be conserved, because they have not seen any evidence of that. I think the country needs to go through a growing process; they have to learn themselves that these are not infinite resources, that we do really need to look after them.

What do you feel about taking on an admin job which may require just supervising people who are actually doing what you love doing?

These are some big decisions one has to take. I love being in the field and playing with animals. I’m sure most of the world loves doing that. The reality is that unless you start climbing the food-chain, become the decision-maker, look at the big picture, it isn’t really feasible. Now I’m married with two children. Being in the field doesn’t pay the wages to support the family.

Well, you could have opted for an academic career…

Academia never appealed to me. During my Ph.D. I quickly realized that professors spend an extraordinary amount of time behind a computer or nurturing wayward students (like myself). At the same time I have always had a management role to play in various field projects and I’ve enjoyed that role. I have also a great interest in commerce, the economics of conservation. The idea of managing the Madras Crocodile Bank really appealed to all my mature passions – to further my career in a professional sense, learn a bit more about accounts, how to market a zoo, learn a bit more about conservation on a worldwide scale at a decision making level… I still love playing with snakes.

What do you see as your major challenges?

My initial impression was that there were a lot of challenges but they don’t appear to be as big now. People are always going to be the tricky part. I’ve yet to figure who’s who and who’s in charge of the various projects that are on-going here. I do know that if you have a few tricky moments with people, it can create major wars in the process.

When I cross the road from the Crocodile Bank to the neighbouring village, I feel like a fish out of water. I don’t feel comfortable. I don’t know if I can sit down next to a guy and chat with him. I don’t know if I can chat with his wife. It may seem silly but in Africa, these are the very little things that a lot of people neglect to do and as a result, I see them coming off second-best. I feel so at home there that I can walk into these situations and be completely relaxed. It’s cultural, reading facial expressions, body language – it’s the key to success in a lot of the things we do. Local NGOs are always more successful than outside NGOs because of this. I’m acutely aware that I don’t know them and it worries me from that side. I want to get in there, right down at the grassroots level, chew the fat with the guys across the road, start to understand how things really work. Even then, I don’t worry about it. It’ll work; it always has done for me. So it shouldn’t be a major problem.

Although I have minimal experience, I do want to make the whole commercial side of things run smoothly. I’d really like to make that a focal point. I need to learn some new skills there.

Are there any lessons from Africa that you can apply here?

There are many roads a developing country can take in the quest for a balanced human wildlife relationship. I have been down several of these paths during my career in Africa, some of which have met with considerable success. Right now it’s too early for me to tell but I have no doubt there will be some junctions here at the Crocodile Bank and in India where I will be able to at least recommend a well trodden path. For instance, in both countries/continents, we have some of the same set of problems – siltation, over fishing, river pollution. Any country that wants to move forward has to deal with these problems.

Tell me about the missing part of your finger.

(Laughs) It was a moment of madness in my youth. When I was working at my old school, I took charge of their snake club. I was cleaning a cobra cage one day and yeah, I was just not careful enough. Next thing I knew, when I woke up, ppphhhew (slices the finger with his hand), finger gone.

Has any incident left a lasting impression on you…

No, no, no. (shakes his head in the negative). I had a look at Google Earth before I came to India. It’s basically one big plowed field. I wondered if there was enough place to breathe down there. I walked on the beach outside the Crocodile Bank and wondered if there was any place I could just go for a walk everyday. Some place quiet and I couldn’t really see any place. I started getting jumpy, and figured this was going to be too claustrophobic, may be not in the first week but certainly after a year. Then visiting your farm, I realized “if there are open spaces 2 hours from Chennai, 5 hours from Chennai there must be really cool places.” Then there was the thought of the trips to Agumbe, Andamans, Chambal…this could be really good. I knew I could be at home here. I’ve always had access to the wilderness, to go for a walk everyday, animals all around. So that has become necessary now to keep my sanity. So it’s all good now. My only impression is that India is my new home, and if she allows, I am Indian.

Aldabra-cadabra - A giant with too many names

2009-09-21T19:17:00.001+05:30

- Janaki Lenin and Jack Frazier

They are the largest native herbivores on the island they inhabit in the Indian Ocean – Aldabra Atoll – and amongst the largest living tortoises on the planet. As four of these Aldabra tortoises deliberately and calmly munch their way through leaves at the Madras Crocodile Bank, an international debate on their scientific name, which has been simmering for more than two decades, is now raging.

Biologists give every living thing a “scientific name,” usually based on Latin or Greek words. This allows them to cut through the babel of names in various languages (there are 17 names recorded for the flap-shelled turtle, Lissemys punctata, in Indian languages alone!). But the case of the Aldabra tortoise has made a mockery of this practice, for there are nearly a dozen “scientific names” in use for the same animal. There is so much confusion that some scientists have used more than one name in the same chapter or even on the same page! So, now the reverse is true: the common name of the Aldabra tortoise has far more universality than its scientific names.

The saga begins with the expansion of European colonial powers and Napoleon’s conquest over much of Europe. About 1809 August Friedrich Schweigger, a German botanist, visited the Paris Museum and did the first scientific study of turtles. Among the dozens of specimens that he described was one that had formerly been part of the King of Portugal’s collection, but after Napoleon’s army claimed Portugal, this tortoise, along with various other scientific specimens, was taken to Paris. Schweigger called this spoil of war Testudo gigantea and recorded the country of origin as “Brasilia” (modern day Brazil). His Latin description of the animal has been variously interpreted and reinterpreted by different experts over the years because Schweigger did not clearly distinguish gigantea from the other large tortoises found on islands of the Western Indian Ocean, Galapagos, mainland Africa or South America.

More than 20 years after Schweigger’s classic study of turtles was published in 1812, André Marie Constance Duméril and Gabriel Bibron, two renowned French biologists, described T. gigantea on the basis of another, larger specimen also lodged in the Paris Museum. There are no records that indicate the origin of this second specimen, and in 1855, A.M.C. Duméril and Auguste Henri André Duméril referred to the same specimen again as the only one of this species in the Paris Museum. For nearly two centuries following Schweigger’s description of T. gigantea the original specimen was never mentioned again. Meanwhile, Duméril and Bibron had also described a new species of giant tortoise, T. elephantina said to be native to islands in the Mozambique Channel, including Anjouan, Comores and “Aldebra”. Could Schweigger’s T.gigantea be the same as Duméril and Bibron’s T. elephantina? This line of thought occurred to Duméril and Bibron as well as to Albert Charles Ludwig Gotthilf Günther, another important 19th century zoologist working in the Natural History Museum in London. A few years later, Ambrosius Arnold Willem Hubrecht in Holland and George Albert Boulenger, yet another important figure at the Natural History Museum, London, concluded that T. gigantea lived on Aldabra. For the next 100 years, the Aldabra tortoise was routinely known by the name of Testudo gigantea.

In 1957, Arthur Loveridge and Ernest E. Williams, from the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, reorganized tortoises of the genus Testudo into seven different genera; the large, or giant, tortoises were now in the genus Geochelone. In addition, Loveridge and Williams created a new subgenus – Aldabrachelys – specifically for the Aldabra tortoise and its close relatives; understandably, they designated T. gigantea as the “type species” for their new subgenus.

In 1982, Roger Bour of the Paris Museum declared that Schweigger’s 1812 specimen was not an Aldabra tortoise, but was “unquestionably” an extinct tortoise, Geochelone (Cylindraspis) indica, from the Mascarene islands; this group of volcanic islands, which includes Mauritius, lies east of Madagascar and is distant from and unrelated to Aldabra and the Seychelles. Bour thus argued that the Aldabra tortoise could not be called T. gigantea (or Aldabrachelys) anymore, and that the appropriate name was T. elephantina, the name coined by his famous compatriots Dúmeril and Bibron 150 years earlier. To fill the void left by rendering Aldabrachelys irrelevant to the Aldabra tortoise, Bour created a new genus, Dipsochelys. Bour based his assumptions on his interpretation of Schweigger’s description of T. gigantea, by no means an unequivocal source.

In 1986, Peter Pritchard agreed with Bour’s conclusion that the 1812 Latin description did not refer to the Aldabra tortoise, but he disagreed that Schweigger had described an extinct tortoise from the Mascarenes. Since the locality for the Napoleonic war trophy was “Brasilia”, Pritchard argued that the specimen in question was the largest tortoise of that country: the yellow-legged tortoise, Chelonoidis denticulata. However, since the name Aldabrachelys had been expressly created for the Aldabra tortoise and was in use, Pritchard appealed for its continued usage. That same year, Chuck Crumly explained that Schweigger’s original 1812 description in Latin was not that easy to interpret, and he went on to clarify that gigantea was the established species name by which the Aldabra tortoise had been regularly known for many years; thus, he argued that the name should continue to be used on the grounds of “nomenclatural stability and universality”.

There is yet another name that complicates the history of the Aldabra tortoise even more: one that had been forgotten for 150 years. In 1831, John Edward Gray, the curator at the Natural History Museum in London, had included T.gigantea with a host of other tortoises under the name T. indica. Gray believed that all giant tortoises, whether those from the Galapagos Archipelago in the eastern Pacific or those from the Seychelles (which includes Aldabra Atoll) in the Indian Ocean, were all the same species. He thought that the virtually global distribution of the single species was from translocations of tortoises among the islands by sailors. Among the different names for tortoises that Gray included as synonyms of T. indica was T. dussumieri. In 1984, Bour declared the name T. dussumieri to be a forgotten name (“nomen oblitum”) – after all, it had not been used for nearly 150 years. But in 1995, confusion escalated again when Justin Gerlach declared Dipsochelys dussumieri as the correct name for the Aldabra tortoise.

Hence, the name of this distinctive tortoise had become a tower of scientific babel. By now five generic names (Aldabrachelys, Geochelone, Dipsochelys, Megalochelys and Testudo) and three specific names (elephantina, gigantea, and dussumieri), combined in at least eight different combinations, were being used to refer to just one tortoise. And, there were yet other names in the running (Testudo daudinii, T. hololissa, T. ponderosa, T. sumeirei, T. gouffei and Dipsochelys arnoldi). In one year alone (2003), Bour used both Aldabrachelys gigantea and Dipsochelys dussumieri in two different publications to refer to the Aldabra tortoise. Yet, whichever name was used, the authors routinely took pains to clarify that they were indeed referring to the animal also known as gigantea.

In 2006, Jack Frazier tried to bring some order by nominating a specimen of an Aldabra tortoise from Dune Patates, Aldabra Atoll, lodged at the Smithsonian Institution as the neotype: since the Schweigger specimen was widely presumed to be lost, the neotype would provide a clear reference for the name T. gigantea.

Inexplicably, within months of the declaration of the neotype, Bour reversed his earlier position and agreed with Gerlach that the long forgotten name dussumieri should be used for the Aldabra tortoise henceforth. At the same time he described in great detail a stuffed tortoise that he claimed had been overlooked in the Paris Museum for over a century. This specimen had a catalogue entry from about 1864 and the museum label stated that it was Testudo carbonaria, the red-legged tortoise from South America. However, Bour pointed out that this old specimen, evidently studied by Dúmeril and Bibron, is really a yellow-legged tortoise (Chelonoidis denticulata), evidently from Brazil. Since the size of the specimen and locality matched the 1812 description of T. gigantea, Bour claimed to have “rediscovered” the long-lost specimen that Schweigger had described, and changing his earlier held opinion, now agreed with Pritchard’s reinterpretation of Schweigger’s 1812 description. Bour also identified Duméril and Bibron’s 1835 specimen of gigantea, and he claimed that these two doyens of herpetology had made a terrible mistake; he said, they were the first to describe the Aldabra tortoise but wrongly named it as T. gigantea.

If Bour’s purported rediscovery of the long-lost Schweigger specimen were accepted, then gigantea can never be used to refer to the Aldabra tortoise again. However, several museum curators and chelonian experts are not convinced of Bour’s and Pritchard’s claim (which would first require a clear understanding of Schweigger’s description). Whether or not the “rediscovery” can ever be proven, various taxonomists, conservationists, zoo curators, and other educators have argued that stability of the name is the fundamental concern, not the “pedantic legalistic” speculations about what may have happened 200 years ago. They argue that to avoid confusion, it is important to continue calling the Aldabra tortoise by a name that has been in continuous usage for more than a century: gigantea. The rules of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) also give primary importance to “nomenclatural stability”. The simple and straight forward mechanism to accomplish this stability is to set aside the “rediscovered” holotype in favour of the 2006 neotype which conserves the name that has immediate and universal recognition: gigantea.

That is the essence of Case 3463 that was submitted to the ICZN in March of this year. Letting the status quo continue with endless debates about whether or not the original specimen from 1812 has or has not been rediscovered and different names being used by various factions does nothing for the future of a species that is threatened by many different risks, including global climate change and rising sea levels on an atoll that is but a few meters above sea level.

Source: Frazier, J. (2009) ‘Case 3463: Testudo gigantea Schweigger, 1812 (currently Geochelone (Aldabrachelys) gigantea; Reptilia, Testudines): proposed conservation of usage of the specific name by maintenance of a designated neotype, and suppression of Testudo dussumieri Gray, 1831 (currently Dipsochelys dussumieri)’. Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 66(1): 34-50.
(a PDF of this document is available on request)

“Like leaves in the forest”

2009-09-01T13:33:00.000+05:30

– Karthikeyan Vasudevan as told to Janaki Lenin

Usually male cane turtles in breeding colours sport red coloured heads. Only a few turtles with black heads such as the one in this picture have been observed so far. Photo - V.Deepak

Three years ago, we didn’t even know where to look for cane turtles. We spent six months in Kariyan Shola of Anamalai Tiger Reserve (then Wildlife Sanctuary) without spotting one. On one post-monsoon morning, four of us walked in a line, scanning the forest floor and finally we saw it. It blended into its habitat so effectively that it looked no more conspicuous than a little brown leaf. With the search image now embedded in our minds, we saw more of them. We realized that although these animals are called turtles, they did not frequent steep river valleys or water bodies but liked to live in flat terrain. After many days of grueling work, Deepak, the field researcher, mapped 42 grids of 100 by 100 m each. In the next two and half years we encountered 40 different individuals in this 42 ha of rainforest. For a species that is rarely seen, that is an amazing number of animals in one small area. We were also able to observe that individuals do not maintain territories. We radio tracked four cane turtles for more than two and half years. This has allowed us to make observations on mating, male combat, feeding on different plant and animal matter. Although we saw two hatchlings, we were never able to see egg-laying.

Cane turtles are specialized animals but we didn’t realize that they were so finely-tuned to environmental factors. Their operating temperatures are between 18 to 22°C and this is directly correlated to rainfall; if the mercury drops below or shoots above this range, then the turtles withdraw their heads and limbs and go into dormancy. We were worried about one animal which maintained a motionless state for about a month and a half until the rains came and ‘turned it on’ again. It’s likely that these turtles spend as much as three months of the year in torpor. We have even recorded lichen growing on their carapace; the only other chelonian to play host to this class of plants is the Galapagos tortoise, though water turtles regularly grow mantles of algae. The sex of most turtles is believed to be programmed by incubation temperature. With such a narrowly defined activity temperatures, I wonder if cane turtles may be the exception to the rule where genetics determines the sex. Only future studies will tell if this is the case.

Cane turtles appear to be “captives” of pure evergreen forests only. It is amazing that such a specialized animal can continue exist in discontinuous habitats over the centuries. We confirmed J. Vijaya’s early observations that they ate fruits and millipedes but we discovered that they particularly relished mollusks; the large red snails are a favourite. They also like the purple fruits of Diospyros buxifolia, of the Ebony family; one female turtle spent 14 days under one tree feeding on the fallen fruits.

These turtles appear to be very colour conscious. During the breeding season, the heads of the males turn red and yellow. At this time, a male literally sees red when he spots another in breeding colours. In fact a male would attack any object that was similarly coloured. On a couple of occasions we watched two males fighting viciously. They bit and tore at carapaces for up to half an hour at a stretch. That explained why some males had missing nuchal scutes. Cane turtles are also extremely sensitive to movement. They definitely detect vibrations on the ground from 10 m and have visual acuity up to 20 m. They also climbed up vantage points to look around and take stock of their surroundings. Typically, we take up positions at a distance from the animal (to be observed) in the morning and remain motionless through the observation period, ignoring the various itches, bugs, leeches and muscular numbness. Like Karna watched over his sleeping teacher, Drona, oblivious to insect stings and irritations, we watch our cane turtles hoping to learn the secrets of their lives. This isn’t research at its glamorous best. In fact, it would be hard for anybody to do a full scale study on the cane turtle alone as data is so hard to come by. But any information we get is a bonus since so little is known about this cryptic animal. It is all unchartered territory. We’d like to look at their reproductive biology next as well as to establish the extent of their population distribution.

Breeding the Pink-ringed Tent Turtle Pangshura tentoria circumdata

2009-06-02T11:50:00.005+05:30

By Soham Mukherjee and Nikhil Whitaker.

Despite being a popular species in the pet trade, very few zoos or private keepers have managed to breed the beautiful Pink-ringed Tent Turtle in captivity. The species is one of the most widely distributed of Indian chelonians, being found in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal.

On 11th March 2009, we were fortunate enough to discover two baby "tentorias" swimming around in the adult pond. We collected several more individuals the next day, and found a nest that had full term (ready to hatch) eggs. These hatched the day after. Another nest was recently discovered, but all eggs appear to be infertile.

The 15 babies are all growing rapidly in a large aquarium with a filtration system, which keeps the water clean. Hatchlings are fed daily at this early stage in life, and they are growing fast !

Gharial Surprise!!!

2009-02-19T11:01:00.008+05:30

By Soham Mukherjee

Just as we were coming out of the main office after our short morning meeting, Nikhil was summoned for an unusual event. A Gharial had laid eggs! Nikhil and Gerry couldn’t believe this had happened as mid Feb is way too early for a Gharial to lay eggs. It was just then I remembered that I had seen one female up on the sand-bank that morning! It was unusual for a female to be so far up on the sand-bank early in the morning. Was it the same female?

Sure enough, it was and she was guarding her nest! There was a mixed feeling of happiness, surprise and excitement. Mohan (whose job is to watch the Gharial, especially during the breeding season when the males have bad fights) couldn’t stop smiling. While Nikhil dug out the nest, Ganga and Pindey made sure that ‘momma’ didn’t come too close. We were also keeping a watch for the ‘papa’ Gharial.

After taking notes like depth of nest and nest temperature, Nikhil took the eggs out, very carefully. The orientation of the eggs was marked and they were carefully placed in a sand tray without shaking them. After a few eggs, I was allowed to take out the rest. Awesome! One more first for me! the first tray was soon full with eggs and there was still more to go. With the sun rising it became tiring, especially since the sand was collapsing into the nest hole almost constantly.

Finally, all the eggs were out. The number of eggs totaling to 40! That was more than twice the expected number. Fortunately the incubators were already set up in anticipation of the coming breeding season. Candling revealed all eggs viable!

Siamese crocodile nest hatches

2009-02-17T16:42:00.006+05:30

By Gowri Mallapur

Since the time I joined MCBT I had heard stories of eggs hatching and the babies ("oh they are so sweet") and almost everyone had pictures of babies. I saw baby Ally, our American Alligator in pictures and heard stories of her growing up years.

On 13th September 2008, while at the breakfast table our radio crackled and we heard Pindey say that there were 8 babies in the Siamese Crocodile Exhibit. We all looked at one another with questioning glances……and then together said WHAT?!?!?! We made a beeline straight for the enclosure. The proud mother was guarding her young, all eight of them, fiercely.

I was like a child in a gift shop. I was immensely excited at the prospect of the additions to the large MCBT family and finally I was able to witness it. The pond in the exhibit had to be drained to separate the 8 infants from the adults.

Crocs are the best moms!! It was amazing to see the female gather each young squealing baby and move it into the water as the water level receded. No one could move or take their eyes off the mom. No one wanted to miss a single minute of what was going on.

We wanted to collect data, number of eggs hatched, see if any had not hatched, and record temperatures within the nest. Ganga and Pindey jumped in and gently collected all the babies into a bucket. They faced serious jaw slapping objection from both parents, but it was a job well done- quickly and smoothly. Nikhil jumped in, took measurements of the nest, recorded temperatures, collected the remaining eggs and shells, and came back out after he had had the last glance around to make sure we had not missed any tiny escape artistes.

By this time the babies were vociferously complaining at having been forcefully removed from their home. I was peering over the bucket and cooing back at them. Soon they were moved to the lab where they were marked, weighed, sexed (boy or girl), given identity codes - very similar to a naming ceremony for babies, but much quieter. They were released in a nursery pond with lot of vegetation and fish.

We have been checking on our wards, often more times then only once….. And they are all doing well!

Frogs and pollution

2008-12-18T10:06:00.002+05:30

Cartoon by Rohan Chakravarty.

Night Safaris at the Croc Bank!

2008-09-05T12:58:00.005+05:30

Gowri Mallapur & Soham Mukherjee

Drive along the ECR at night and besides speeding cars, all else is quiet. But in the midst of this silence…..the Madras Crocodile Bank buzzes with activity.

A visit to the Madras Crocodile Bank always spells excitement for all…young and old!! But it is a special place to be after dark.

Crocodiles show different behavior during the night time - be it splashing water, jaw-slapping or reclaiming territories. The first visual of the ‘eye shine’ in torch light always amazes each viewer (One hears a wide variety of exclamations, ranging from Aiyoo to Awesome!!).

The guests are escorted around the park by trained staff, who talks to them about the animals. Visitors get to experience amazing behavior first-hand.

With close to a thousand crocodiles on display, this is an experience everyone must have!

THE CROC BANK VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE

2008-09-02T17:03:00.002+05:30

THE CROC BANK VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE
Rebecca Davenport

After 14 years of sitting in classrooms I decided that, before going to university, I needed a change of scene and to do something completely different to anything in my somewhat cocooned life. I had felt some attraction towards India for a long time so I got in touch with a company that specialises in finding projects there. This is how I came across the Madras Centre for Herpetology. I booked my placement and plane ticket and started saving up…

As soon as I arrived at the Crocodile Bank I got stuck into the physical work, jumping into a pit full of approximately 600 mugger crocodiles. I soon realised that it is a common misconception that crocodiles are vicious monsters ready to attack on sight, and that in fact, unless they are very hungry or feel threatened, they are comparatively placid and do not move for much of the day.

My tasks were hugely varied and although I spent much of my time pit cleaning and helping to feed the crocodiles, I was also involved in collecting and checking the validity of the crocodile eggs, transferring crocs from one pit to another, working with the summer camp kids and by the end of the first month I became resident croc bank artist, painting boards, making posters and doing sketches for worksheets and websites. Although I was not fortunate enough to see a nesting turtle during the turtle walks that are held during the nesting season along the beach outside croc bank, I had the huge privilege of helping a clutch of tiny Olive Ridley hatchlings make the dangerous journey from nest to sea. This moonlit experience was one of the most magical I have had.

I came away from croc bank with a greatly enhanced understanding and knowledge, not only of crocodiles and other reptiles housed by the centre, but also of the problems facing them, the reasons for these problems and why we should and, to some extent, how we can, start to solve these problems. Crucially, I learnt that people’s hostility towards these creatures is primarily based on stories, myths, propaganda and a largley unfounded sense of fear: a crocodile attack is extremely uncommon. However, fear is not the only problem, commercial exploitation is a huge threat and without adequate education these problems will continue to threaten reptile populations until they become extinct.

I spent much of my time at the young reptiles section and it became evident that, while many of the small children were keen to touch and learn about the baby mugger crocodile and rock python, their parents would often discourage them as a result of their own fear. The misconception that crocodiles are savage monsters is a powerful one and will take the greatest efforts to dispel. However, I felt I had made at least a small improvement to the fate of these reptiles each time I persuaded a terrified visitor to touch them and to understand that there are many reasons that we should try to prevent their extinction.

NESTING AT MADRAS CROCODILE BANK

2008-08-21T11:57:00.004+05:30

NESTING AT MADRAS CROCODILE BANK
Gowri Mallapur & Soham Mukherjee

Awww…. She is going to be a mom!!!! This is a statement that is now commonly heard all around the Madras Crocodile bank.

Five species of crocodiles are now nesting here. The Siamese Crocodile, Morelet’s crocodile, Saltwater crocodile, West African Dwarf crocodile and the Yacare Caiman. The females have built mound nests of vegetation, soil, mud and other nesting material available to them. All the mothers-to-be are extremely protective of the nests and can often be seen guarding them. The females rearrange the nests periodically to maintain optimum temperatures and humidity levels.

The nesting season of the crocodilian species varies and so do their nest types. The Gharial and the Marsh Crocodile make nests by digging holes in the sand and laying eggs there. Mugger here lay they're eggs between February and April, followed by the Gharial and Siamese Crocodiles which nest in April. Finally the Salty lays her eggs in May, followed by the Yacare Caiman and West African Dwarf Crocodile in July.

Out of the 23 species of crocodilians in the world, the crocodile bank is home to 14 species. They include the highly endangered Gharial, Siamese crocodile, False Gharial and the Dwarf Caiman- one of the smallest crocodilian species.

The female Indian Rock Python too has laid eggs… She will remain coiled around them, for about 60 days, until they hatch. This behaviour is called brooding. She can raise her body temperature above the air temperature by twitching her muscles.

A NOTE ON THE "DIET" OF THE GHARIAL (Gavialis gangeticus)

2008-08-20T11:55:00.001+05:30

On 14th August 2008, at about 1000 hrs, I was leading a group of representatives from the National Film Development Corporation. These guys had come over to film MCBT for the Tamil Nadu Tourism Board’s new “Hop on-hop off” tour. It’s a great initiative; for example, you could get off at MCBT, spend 3-4 hours here, and then get on to another bus to finish with the Temples at Mahabs or go back to the city. This leaves you the option of hanging out at Croc Bank, without worrying about making it back to your bus, which’ll leave in 20 minutes.

All was proceeding well, up until we reached enclosure 5….our gharial underwater exhibit. We had discussed, as usual, various facets of biology of each species, and I’d insisted that gharial were primarily fish eaters. On coming into our underwater exhibit which houses a large male about 4 meters long and 3 sub-adults 1.5-2.0 meters long, we had someone go up and call them to feed so we could get some movement. The camera was rolling, and we waited in anticipation for the male’s response.

Things happened rather fast next. The lone male gharial in this enclosure immediately seized an adult pond turtle (Melanochelys trijuga) laterally; meaning the turtle’s tail end was on his lower jaw and the head region touching the upper jaw. Luckily, this smart turtle decided to pull both head and tail into her shell before she was caught! Seconds later the male realized his mistake and let the turtle go, who proceeding to swim frantically to the opposite end of the pond. I believe this was a response to the gharial’s annoyance at being disturbed rather than an actual feeding response, but the timing was great!

World's Biggest Crocodiles

2008-08-02T08:24:00.013+05:30

By Rom and Nik Whitaker

The fascination for ‘finding the biggest’ is deeply engrained and when film producer Harry Marshall at Icon Films in the U.K. offered a chance to search for the world’s largest croc who could refuse?

Claims of giant crocs are as wild as those for outsize fish and snakes. “It was longer than the boat”, has been earnestly related in a dozen languages, from the Rift Valley lakes of Ethiopia to the mighty Fly River in Papua New Guinea. And the Fly is where this ‘skull quest’ (for that’s what it’s become) began.

The largest crocodile with photographic documentation
In 1980 I (RW) was working for the United Nations croc program in Papua New Guinea as ‘Production Manager’; the second author (NW) was also there, see illustration.

Nik assists in measuring a record sized saltie skull, PNG

Photo: Rom Whitaker

Along with UN Volunteer Jerome Montague, also a biologist, we went off on patrol down the Fly River, checking on the success of village croc farms, providing water pumps and advice on husbandry. When we arrived at Obo village one sultry afternoon the villagers gathered on the riverbank to greet us and to excitedly show what they had caught the previous morning in a net set for the famous local fish, the barramundi. A huge male saltwater croc had gotten his teeth tangled in the hand-made rope net and drowned. It took 50 men to haul the giant croc out onto the bank (it could have weighed a ton) and when they cut it open there was a whole rusa deer in the stomach. The skin had been salted and rolled up so we flattened it out on the ground and measured it. The total length was 6.20 meters, or a little over 20 feet long! Since it was already a bit dry it might have been a few inches longer.

Skin and skull of the Fly River saltie, PNG

Photos courtesy: Rom Whitaker

The note that Jerome published about this find in “Herp Review” in 1983 didn’t exactly shake the world. People were (and still are) quite convinced that salties well over 20 feet long are on record. But when the quest for the biggest started to get serious, it was soon evident that these ‘records’ are mostly anecdotes with no solid evidence. Some colleagues are ready to accept anecdotal total lengths; we’re much more skeptical.

The 1:7 Hypothesis
Wouldn’t it be just great if you could get the dorsal head (skull) length of a croc, multiply it by a simple number and get the total length? Well, E. Banks (1931), Karl Schmidt (1944), Heinz Wermuth (1964), Angus Bellairs (1969) Allen Greer (1974) and Allan Woodward et al (1995) are some of the authors who concurred that an average ratio for crocodilian head length to total length comes out to close to1:7 using several samples of salties, Niles and American alligators. In this formula, the simple measurement of the skull length is from nose tip to the back of the occipital platform, (see illustration) preferably using a big tree caliper or at least by using a perpendicular steel ruler front and back while laying the tape. (Professional ‘skullers’ will warn that a croc skull will shrink up to 4 % in passing years.)

Courtesy: Phill Hall

Unfortunately some croc workers have taken ‘head length’ to mean from nose tip to back of the mandible (the lower jaw bone which sticks way out behind the skull), adding 25% or more. Other workers routinely measure from nose tip to the back of the occipital condyle which articulates with the spinal column, and this will add a few extra centimetres to the length of a big skull.

However, the 1:7 formula is based mainly on smaller animals with few samples of crocodilians above 4 metres. While gators and broad-snouted crocs like the mugger are relatively ‘stumpy’ animals, and the gharial are at the other linear extreme, salties and American crocs fall in the intermediate range. Wermuth notes that salties have a proportionately longer tail (relative to trunk length) than other crocs and that in salties over 1.5 meters, the head width increases at a proportionately greater rate than trunk length. The other problem is of course that crocs are like us, they grow long when young, then slow down and start growing outward, again complicating the simple ratio.

So there are bound to be serious difficulties when trying to apply the 1:7 to all crocs of all ages. Predictably, though there are some big skulls in collections, there are very few whole skeletons or reliable total lengths to go with these biggest of skulls. A single illustration will serve as an example of the unreliability of historical references: the saltwater croc skull from Luzon, Philippines (killed in the 1880s) measures 71 cm (the dorsal cranial length, not the mandible), a big one indeed. Using the 1:7 ratio that would make it a 4.7 metre croc (a 15 footer!), yet the data card for the skull, repeated ad nauseum in the literature, assures us that it was an amazing 33 feet or ten metres ( plus 4% for shrinkage)! Even with a 1:9 dorsal skull length to total length ratio (which we can confirm some salties indeed have) this saltie couldn’t have been more than 6.5 metres, or 21.5 feet.

Australia
Predictably the Aussies (who are sometimes just a bit like Texans, but luckily have no George Bush) claim the biggest crocs, but when you pin them down, again there is little solid evidence. The oft quoted 28 footer killed back in July 1957 by the Pawlowskis in the Norman River Estuary of the Gulf of Carpentaria remains just an unverified anecdote, no matter how many publications the story appears in.

Adam Britton and I (RW) measured two of the largest saltie skulls in Australia, one called ‘Charley’ at the Darwin Croc Farm (a ‘mere’ 64.4 cm) and one shot by Terry Holtz on display at the Corrorboree Tavern near Darwin. This one measures 68.8 cm and is possibly the largest skull in Australia. Driving down the road we stopped in for yet another cold one at Bark Hut Inn, Annaburroo and there we found and measured just the mandible of a saltie 89.9 cm – bigger than the Corroboree mandible. Adam has heard of another croc skull in NT with a mandible of 96 cm (close to the size of the Paris Museum monster croc). The search continues for the largest Aussie skull.

News of an estimated 22 footer has also come from the Bullo River. We did see some 16 footers and one massive slide, but the Bullo giant is still out there.

India
Back in India there are current stories of 23 footers in Bhitarkanika National Park in the Indian state of Orissa. In fact, someone is such a convincing story teller that the Guinness Book of Records proclaims that this is where the largest croc in the world lives. It could be true, we hope it is, but we need evidence and not another tale of ‘it was bigger than the boat’. Hopefully Guinness does more rigorous verification with their other stories.

The Kanika Skull

Photo: Janaki Lenin

There is, however, some solid evidence of giant crocs here in the form of a couple of skulls, one of them owned by Prince Shivendra, the Raja of the erstwhile principality of Kanika (part of it now included in the National Park, famous for its amazingly successful croc recovery program). A big croc, killed in 1926 on the Dhamra River was said to have been 23 feet long, close to seven metres. The huge skull is the only remaining evidence and at 73.3 cm from nose tip to back of occiput appears to be the largest saltwater croc skull in India and one of the top three in the world. (Note: In 1973 Daniel and Hussain report this skull to be one metre and in 1978 I (RW) reported it as 78cm! Obviously meticulous measurements using tree calipers is the way to go). But if ‘Kalia’ (the name of this giant croc who reportedly ate 13 women – their bangles were recovered from his stomach) was indeed 23 feet long, then the skull length to total length ratio is 1:9.4, far away from the ‘standard’ ratio of 1:7. Another one, found dead in the same river by the Wildlife Department in 2005 has a dorsal cranial length of 66 cm and a total length of about 5.2 m (17 feet) (a ratio of 1:7.9), though the authorities reported that the carcass measured over 5.7 m (19 feet) and the skull 68 cm (a ratio of 8.38). Luckily the entire skeleton was preserved and needs to be carefully re-measured.

To confirm the inapplicability of the 1:7 ratio for big crocs we measured ‘Jaws III’, the 16 foot (4.8m) 38 year old saltie at the Madras Crocodile Bank and the head to total length ratio worked out to be 1:9. If we just had a larger sample size of head to total length in bigger crocs we’d be closer to a realistic ratio. It’s very evident that big crocs (gators too) slow down on linear growth and start getting bulkier at a certain point. Webb and Messel (1978) make the point that it would not be valid to apply the same ratio formulae used in smaller crocs to salties over 4 m. This of course tosses the 1:7 ratio for a loop, though it’s still helpful and somewhat accurate for animals below 4 m, especially when doing size estimates during night counts when all you see is the head.

The biggest saltie skull in the world: Paris Museum

Photos courtesy: Peter Taylor

When we met up at the CSG meeting in Montelimar in June ’06, Peter Taylor promised to blow our minds with details of a spectacular skull at the Paris Museum he was privileged to measure in great detail in July 2003. And sure enough, with a dorsal head length of 76 cm, a maximum skull width of 48 cm and a massive mandible of 98.3 cm this specimen gets the prize of biggest known C. porosus skull in the world; these three measurements exceed anything else on record for broad-snouted crocs. It was apparently killed in Cambodia in the early 1800s, but there are no other details.

Giant Niles
The last lap of the “skullology tour” had to be Africa. Everyone has seen the spectacular footage of wildebeests and gazelles being snapped up like rats by huge Nile crocs but just how big are they? Local intelligence was that the largest Nile crocs were at Lake Chamo, a Rift Valley lake in southern Ethiopia. We used some fancy military issue, range-finding binoculars to get very accurate distances between us (and camera) and the crocs. Then, combined with an ordinary digital camera and a bit of Photoshop magic we got some accurate remote measurements of Nile crocs, some over 18 feet long—saltie size. This is how it’s done: do the range-finding and picture simultaneously, put the picture onto Photoshop where the pixel length of the croc is easily converted to millimeters, multiply the pixel length by the recorded distance of camera-to-croc in millimeters (ie how big it actually was on the camera sensor) and then divide by the focal length of the lens. This gives you a reasonably accurate length of the critter.

We discovered a dusty little cubbyhole at the Arba Minch Crocodile Ranch near Chamo where skulls of crocs drowned in Nile perch nets were given their final rest. It was a bonanza of giant skulls and our excitement grew as we measured a dozen of the biggest. All we could think was “bloody hell, these are the biggest Nile croc skulls on record”. Our enthusiasm was obviously infectious, the Farm Manager, Assegid Gebre, got all the skulls cleaned up and the next time we visited he had them carefully mounted in glass cases. These are truly invaluable specimens, one measuring over 68 cm, the size of the Corrorboree Tavern saltie skull, the biggest we found in Australia. This Lake Chamo skull is the largest on record for C. niloticus!

Other Giants
After years of being convinced that salties are the biggest crocs, colleagues who knew of my interest, started sending in intriguing bits of information. One bit was the statistics of the skull of a monster American crocodile at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York. At 73.5 cm it is a shade bigger than ‘Kalia’ the giant Orissa C. porosus skull.

Colin McCarthy with the largest crocodilian skull on record, British Museum

Photo courtesy: George Craig

But what really zapped us were skull sizes of the Malayan gharial (Tomistoma schlegelii): one at the British Museum measures 84 cm (this is presently the longest known crocodilian skull in existence), one at Munich Museum at 81.5 cm and another at the AMNH at 76.5 cm, overshadowing the other species. What the head to total length ratio is for this species is anyone’s guess. Our friend Uthen Youngprapakorn has a gang of living giant ‘Tommies’ at his Samut Prakarn Crocodile Farm in Bangkok; we just need to get his permission to jump in the enclosure and get some measurements (or figure out a way to do it remotely – with range finder technology). The third longest skull in the world is a gharial (Gavialis gangeticus) at Munich which is 77.3 cm, but again we don’t know how long the animal was or what the head to total length ratio for big gharial might be. Skull lengths are proportionally longer for these species compared with other crocs, and don’t necessarily translate to longest body length.

Discussion
While we can now say with certainty that salties can reach lengths of 20 feet (6 metres) and above, it is also quite certain that the gharial, the Malayan gharial, the American croc and the Nile croc can reach over 20 feet in length. And we shouldn’t totally discount the Orinoco croc measured by A. von Humboldt’s assistant in 1800 which was purportedly 22 feet 3 inches (6.78 m) (Schmidt, 1944).

An interesting aside gleaned while spending an afternoon with paleo-croc master, Dr. Wann Langston Jr. at the University of Texas in Austin: while modern crocs seem to peak out at around 20 feet long, the big extinct mesoeucrocodilians like Deinosuchus, Sarcosuchus, Terminonaris seemed to have peaked at about 40 feet (and weighed up to 3,000 kg!) – wonder what their head to TL ratio is?.

This is an intriguing subject and hopefully this note will encourage colleagues out there to come up with some bigger skulls (or other solid evidence) than we’ve been able to find. It might also encourage some re-measuring, using a standard caliper, some creative mathematics to account for shrinkage and a more comprehensive table of crocodilian maximum sizes for all the species. We also need to take a cue from Webb and Messel (1978) where they suggest that it might make more sense to derive a relationship between volume of bone in the skull and total length rather than linear ratios which just don’t seem to work for the real big ones. And not to be ignored is the formula derived by John Thorbjarnarson and colleagues working with a large sample of Orinoco and American crocs. Their formula is: TL = hindfoot (longest toe with nail) length X 11.85 minus 12.97. The days of listening to the same old ‘bigger than the boat’ stories are over.

The below table lists the 30 or so biggest crocs/skulls we were able to locate and includes the very few examples of both Head Length and Total Length that we have been able to find for big crocs and also some of the wide ranging ratios that are driving us ‘skullduggers’ nuts. The unfortunate thing is that perhaps the genes favouring gigantism have been lost from the gene pool as a result of the selective killing of big crocs around the world. This is a good argument against the continued ‘safari’ harvests of the world’s remaining giant crocs and perhaps CSG can play a role in curbing this loss.

Acknowledgements
A number of colleagues generously contributed to this compilation of big croc information and we’d like to profusely thank Wayne King, the late Phil Hall, Ivan Ineich, Wann Langston, Peter Taylor, Paolo Piras, Gunther Koehler, Fred Glaw, Adam Britton, Charlie Manolis, Jack Cox, Mike Klemens, George Craig, Sudhakar Kar, Jerome Montague, Assegid Gebre, Allan Woodward, Ruth Elsey, John Thorbjarnarson, Ralf Sommerlad, Rich Fergusson, John Brueggen, Kent Vliet, Kaushik Deuti and others we may have omitted. Thanks also to the Icon Films crew for facilitating the croc measuring trip around the world and to African Parks colleagues who hosted Nik and I in Ethiopia. Janaki Lenin and Adam Britton kindly reviewed the manuscript.

References

Banks, E. (1931). Some measurements of the estuary crocodile (C.porosus) from Sarawak. J.Bom. Nat. Hist. Soc., 34: 1086-8.
Barbour, T. (1924). An historic crocodile skull. Copeia 126:16.
Barbour, T. (1933). A large alligator skull. Copeia 133:43.
Cory, C.B. (1896). Hunting and fishing in Florida. Estes and Lauriat, Boston, Massachusetts.
Greer, A.E. (1974). On the maximum total length of the saltwater crocodile C. porosus. J. Herp. 8:378-81.
Iordansky, N.N. (1973). The skull of the Crocodilia. In ‘Biology of the Reptilia’ (Eds. Gans and Parsons) Ch.5, pp. 201-62. (Academic Press, Inc, New York).
Kar, S. (2006). Record of a large saltwater crocodile from Orissa, India, CSG/NL 25(3): 27.
Kar, S. (2006). World’s largest crocodile skull? CSG/NL 25(4): 21-22.
Manolis, C. (2006). Record of a large saltwater crocodile from the Northern Territory, Australia. CSG/NL 25(3): 27-28.
Montague, J. Jerome. (1983). A new size record for the saltwater crocodile (C.porosus). Herp Review 14(2):36-37.
Muller, Lorenz. (1927). Ergebnisse der Forschungsreisen Prof. E. Stromers in den Wusten Agyptens. 1. Beitrage zur Kenntnis der Krokodilier des agyptischen Tertiars. Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Munchen. Pp. 89-96.
Piras, P. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis: Theoretical morphology of fossil and recent crocodile skulls by means of 3 and 2-dimensional geometric morphometrics (pers comm. 2007).
Schmidt, K.P. (1944). Crocodiles. Fauna 6:67-72.
Webb, G.J.W. and Harry Messel. (1978). Morphometric Analysis of C. porosus from the North Coast of Arnhem Land, Northern Australia. Aust. J.Zool. 26: 1-27.
Wermuth, H. (1964). Das Verhaltnis zwischen Kopf-, Rumpf- und Schwanzlange bei den rezenten Krokodilen. Senckenb. Biol. 45, 369-85.
Woodward, Allan R., John H. White, and Stephen B. Linda, (1995). Maximum Size of the Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis). J. of Herpet. 29(4): 507-513

SOME LARGE CAPTIVE CROCS:
C.porosus - Jaws III at MCB, India – 16’10” (5.13m) DCL 56.3 RATIO: 1:9.1
C.porosus - Brutus, Cassius at Green Isle, Australia – 17 to 18 feet?
C.porosus – St.Augustine Alligator Farm, Florida – 15 feet six inches
C.acutus – Silver Springs, Florida – 16 feet?
C.p./C.s. hybrids at Samut Prakarn, Thailand – 18 to 20 feet ??
C.porosus – Moitaka, Port Moresby, PNG – 17 to 18 feet
C.porosus – Mainland Holdings croc farm, PNG – 17 to 18 feet
T.schlegilii – Samut Prakarn Croc Farm, Thailand – 17 to 18 feet

DHL = Dorsal Head Length (from nose tip to posterior of occipital platform)

TTL = Total Length (nose tip to tail tip)
C.c. = Crocodylus cataphractus
C.i = Crocodylus intermedius
C.n. = Crocodylus niloticus
C.p. = Crocodylus porosus
G.g. = Gavialis gangeticus
T.s. = Tomistoma schlegelii
A.m. = Alligator mississippiensis

NOTE: THESE FIGURES ARE PROVISIONAL! Skull measurements may vary because of methods/equipment used, shrinkage of bone over time (up to 4%) and other factors. In general most of the measurements in the above table are accurate to within plus/minus 1 cm. American Museum measurements furnished by Paolo Piras were taken from nose tip to posterior of occipital condyle. For these I took the liberty of subtracting 3 cms to arrive at the DHL. Obviously, all the above measurements need to be reconfirmed for accuracy.

Herp Talk 3: In conversation with Jeri Imansyah

2008-07-06T12:13:00.004+05:30

In conversation with: Jeri Imansyah, a researcher studying Komodo dragon ecology and behaviour for the last 7 years.

How long have you been working with komodos?

Since the end of 2001. Almost 7 years. From 2002 to 2006 I worked for the San Diego Zoo’s Centre for Research on Endangered Species (CRES). When the Memorandum of Understanding between San Diego Zoo and The Nature Conservancy - Indonesia Program expired, we (the 3 people working on komodos) formed our own NGO called Komodo Survival Program. We are continuing the program that was started by the San Diego Zoo with support from the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA).

What aspects are your studying?

We are monitoring the komodo dragon population on the islands, prey availability (particularly deer), reproduction ecology, annual survey of nests, spatial ecology. In the long-term we’d like to see if there is any inter-island movement of komodo dragons, and the survival rate.

How are you studying home range? By radio telemetry?

Yes. Last time we radio tracked 20 animals.

How many males and females?

We don’t know as it is very difficult to distinguish between the sexes.

How long did you track them for?

Two months of tracking hatchlings. It’s very hard to find hatchlings, the range of the equipment was limited. For four months we tracked breeding females during the nesting season. We had GPS collars on the adults whom we tracked for eight months. We realize that this is not adequate so we would like to do more.

Outside the breeding period, what is the home range of an adult male?

During the non-breeding period, a male’s home range averages 170 ha; it expands to 370 ha during the breeding period.

What about an adult female?

When a female is nesting, her home range is not big; it is centred around the nest. After she lays the eggs, she guards it for three to four months. If she lays the eggs in August, she will leave the nest in December or early January. It’s a quite a long time to guard the nest. During that time she is sitting around. Sometimes she will look for food but not go too far.

What kind of places do they nest in? Sandy areas or up in the forest…

Most of the nests are in open areas on the edge of forest and savanna. There are 3 types of nests – mound nests (the mounds are made by megapodes and the komodos use these mounds after the megapodes have fledged), rocky hill nests and ground nests. In some places the ground is hollow and they dig into it. The commonest is the mound nest.

Do these 3 different nests have different survival rates?

It’s hard to say as we haven’t studied it.

Do females nest in the same location every year?

Hard to say, because we could not determine any particular pattern. Some females use the same nest for three consecutive years, some make different nests, and some of them were not active during the following year.

What are they defending the eggs from?

Other komodos. Also some females would like to use the same nesting site. Sometimes the female will also chase away big males.

Every island has a bit of forest, savanna, mangroves. Which ecosystem supports the most number of komodos?

The forest. They use the savanna for basking, to cross from one forest patch to another, hunting deer.

Is anyone looking at resource partitioning between Komodo dragons and water monitor lizards on the islands where they occur sympatrically?

No study has been done. There are very few water monitors on the islands of Komodo, and Rinca. Their activity pattern is different from komodo dragons. Water monitors are found only in the mangroves, not in the forests where komodos are.

Is there any indication that the historic range of the Komodo dragon was larger than it is today?

Auffenberg was the first to try to estimate the range of the komodo dragon, not with direct evidence but by interviewing local people. The current range covers the islands in the Komodo National Park, particularly Komodo, Rinca, Gili Motang and Nusa Kode and outside the NP in Flores. Padar Island had komodos in the late 70s and early 80s but since the 1980s we haven’t seen any evidence of them on the island. In Flores, they are found along the west and the north coasts. But in 2005 a survey conducted along the northeast coast of Flores, across Detusoko Bay and Kota Baru Bay, didn’t find any evidence of them.

Why did they disappear from Padar Island?

Probably because of the decline in deer population in the past. Deer is the main prey of the komodo. They also prey on water buffalo, wild boar and other animals. Padar Island is quite small. Now the deer population is high and there is a recommendation to reintroduce komodos to the island from other islands and zoos. Indonesian zoos have been very successful in captive breeding komodo dragons but they don’t have the resources to maintain them. So on their request the government appointed an ecologist from the University of Indonesia who recommended that captive bred komodos can be reintroduced to Padar Island. I don’t think that is a good idea though. Although the deer population is high, less than 5% of the land area on Padar Island is forested. Our study showed that komodo dragons, particularly the juveniles, need forests. For the first two years of their lives, komodos are arboreal. After they reach 90 -1.2 m in length they become terrestrial. They cannot stand very high temperatures and they need shade. They are occasionally found in the savanna areas but mostly while courting and hunting.

So is forest protection the focus of your conservation plan?

We are trying to identify the main threats to komodos within the Park. Komodo and Rinca Islands are large whereas Gili Motang and Nusa Kode are small. Komodo and Rinca have about 40% forest and have a high density of deer. So komodos have food and shelter. But Gili Motang and Nusa Kode are hilly islands and the availability of prey is very low compared to other bigger islands. The size of the komodos is also smaller than the other islands. The population on the smaller islands is declining.

What’s the average size difference of komodos between the large and small islands?

On Komodo and Rinca, the average size of the larger lizards is 2.6 m. But on Gili Motang and Nusa Kode, the lizards are much smaller, the biggest one we ever caught was only 2.4 m. The two smaller islands have less than 200 individuals. We believe that if a population is less than 200 then there is a greater chance of extinction.

Deer are not native to these islands. They were introduced here only a couple of centuries ago.

Deer was introduced during the 19th century by the Sultan of Bhima who used these islands for game hunting. However, Flores has a native population of deer. Ever since people began intensive cultivation, the komodo population on Flores has declined.

What would the komodos have eaten before the deer were introduced?

May be buffalo, wild boar and other smaller animals.

If they had only smaller animals to eat then there couldn’t have been very many komodos. So do you think that historically there are more number of dragons today than there were a couple of centuries ago?

We don’t know.

There are several cases of komodos killing people. Do you think these are accidents or are komodos actually going for people?

By accident. The villagers were careless. There was a case in Kerora village when a man was sleeping on the ground during the day next to drying fish. A komodo came and bit him. He survived with just injuries. The last case of mortality was a small kid who was squatting on the ground on the beach. Komodos are attracted to villages because of the smell of drying fish, chickens, goats. So when it saw the child, it must have mistaken him for a goat.

Considering the amount of time komodos spend scavenging, do you find more of them around villages than forests?

Not many are near villages.

After such an incident, what is the perception of the local villagers? Do they see komodos as an obstacle in their lives?

In Komodo, the traditional belief is that humans and komodas are brothers. In their mythology, a woman gave birth to twins – one was human and the other komodo. So they never disturb the komodos and allow them to roam freely through their village. When there is an accident, they are worried and concerned. They have asked the Komodo National Park authorities to move the komodos living in the village. The Park authorities have translocated seven or eight animals. Among the villagers, some are opposed to the relocation and others support it. It is possible for the villagers to live peacefully with komodos.

Is any compensation paid to the families when a person is bitten or killed?

Yes. But I’m not sure about livestock. They have compensated for livestock loss in the past.

How many komodos are in the wild?

Less than 1500

What has the population trend been since you began studying them?

The populations on Gili Montang and Nusa Kode are declining. It’s stable on the two larger islands. That’s why we are recommending an island specific conservation plan. Currently the government is monitoring the populations only on the larger islands and not on the smaller islands. We haven’t found a single nest or hatchlings in either of the two smaller islands.

Komodo dragons are said to be ambush predators. But we saw even the large adults actively foraging yesterday.

They mostly rely on ambush hunting. I’ve seen a dragon follow an injured deer all the way for about 2 km away to the water and kill it on the beach.

What do juveniles do?

They are bimodal – active in the morning and late afternoon. The adults rely on big mammals. The juveniles live on other reptiles, birds, bird eggs.

Yesterday, when we were on Rinca, there were two dragons chasing us. Why do you think that happened?

Some individuals are more aggressive than others. It is actually very rare for komodos to chase humans unless there is a smell of food. Then they see us as competitors and chase us away. We consider the dragons on Loh Buaya to be more aggressive than at other places. Whenever we have had to catch dragons, we have to chase away other dragons. May be they are curious and want to see what’s going on.

So when you are radio tracking a dragon, do you have to watch out for dragons lying in ambush?

Yes. Usually if there is no smell of food, komodo dragons will avoid humans.

When you do fieldwork you would have to camp occasionally. What precautions do you take?

If we have live chickens we hang the cage up in the trees. We have to bring goats sometimes to bait the dragons if we want to catch them. If we can, we leave the animals on a boat offshore. Although I know of an incident when a komodo swam out to a boat where fish had been left drying. I have had komodos scratching my tent at night.

Did you have any close encounters with komodos?

I was attacked and bitten by a komodo once. We were trying to catch a dragon and my crew was inexperienced. The noose slipped and the dragon came for me. I was running backwards and tripped on the rope. I fell down and the dragon was very close. I kicked it but it grabbed my shoe. I kicked with the other leg. It was a very big dragon, about 2.8 m and about 60 kg. It bit my finger but fortunately one of the crew grabbed the dragon by the tail and pulled while someone else hit it with a stick.

Did you have any trouble healing?

No. I poured alcohol on it right away. I couldn’t use my left hand for a few days but I was alright. Another time I was chased by a dragon at Loh Baru. I was wearing bright red new shoes. The dragon was very interested in the shoes and kept following me.

So you think it can see colour?

Yes. It kept looking only at my feet.

What are your challenges in studying komodos?

Funding is always a problem. The government has high expectations. They want us to give them population estimates of every valley. We cannot do that. We can however, do sampling. Also I always see the same human faces; it’s very boring. Laughs

How do the other Indonesians view komodos?

They think komodos are big, dangerous and very aggressive animals. But they are proud that it is found only in Indonesia and there is a strong public opposition to exporting komodos to other countries.

Hello Tata, Tata Turtles

2008-06-20T16:58:00.003+05:30

by Ashish Fernandes (Greenpeace, Oceans Campaigner)

Photo: Bivash Pandav

There might be some scientific debate over whether Gahirmatha is the largest arribada site in the world or not, but no one can dispute that this is one of the most amazing spectacles in the natural world, right up there with the migration of the wildebeest across the endless plains of East Africa, the spawning of the salmon or the movement of emperor penguins across the icy expanses of Antarctica. The windswept beaches of Gahirmatha in Orissa are witness to the annual spectacle of hundreds of thousands of nesting olive ridley sea turtles clambering ashore en masse to nest, a spectacle that can sometimes spread across several successive nights.

This patch of the Orissa coast is one of the most pristine and least inhabited, which explains why it is preferred by the turtles. All this could change very shortly though; Tata Steel has commenced construction of its deepwater port at Dhamra, in partnership with Larsen & Toubro, and proposals for ship building yards and sundry factories are following suit.

Corporate Responsibility. Ethics. Environmental commitment. The Precautionary Principle. Are these mere buzzwords or do they actually mean something to India’s largest corporation? There is now a wealth of evidence to suggest that building this port would be an unacceptable environmental risk in general, particularly so for the turtles. Yet Tata Steel has chosen to ignore evidence and entreaties alike and plough doggedly ahead.

Dhamra is less than 15 km from the mass nesting beaches at Gahirmatha. And less than 5 km from the Bhitarkanika Sanctuary, last stronghold of the saltwater crocodile in India and the second largest mangrove forest in the country. Yet the only Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) conducted for the project, in 1997, says almost nothing of the possible or likely impacts on these two important areas. The fundamental flaws in the EIA relate to a complete omission of the impacts on turtles, impacts of noise and chemical pollution and a poor hazard analysis and emergency plan. Further, the EIA, done in 1997, considers a port with significantly different specifications from the project currently being built. The initial proposed capacity was 20 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) where as the proposed capacity is now 83 mtpa. The original project was to handle bulk carriers up to 120,000 deadweight tons (dwt); the revised plan proposes handling ships up to 180,000 dwt.

As if this isn’t bad enough, the EIA has no accurate baseline ecological data. Which is why horseshoe crabs, the rare amphibian Fejervarya cancrivora (hitherto only recorded from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India) and the snake Fordonia leucobalia are not even mentioned. All these species and others were recorded recently by a rapid biodiversity assessment conducted by researchers from the North Orissa University that was commissioned by Greenpeace.

But again this shouldn’t be too surprising because the 1997 EIA also considered a different port site. That’s right. A different site, on the nearby Kanika Sands. The port was later shifted to the adjoining mainland, and a cover up job done in terms of the clearance procedures, but these are minor details when it comes to pushing through a major industrial project. Of course, Tata Steel’s defense is that it wasn’t in the picture at this time, yet one would imagine that a company which projects such high ethical standards would refuse to be associated with a project possessing such shady antecedents.

At this stage the waters are already murky enough, but things get worse. Around the time the project was being rushed through government clearance procedures, the area of the port site was excluded from the Bhitarkanika Sanctuary, despite falling within the Sanctuary’s boundaries as per the initial notification. The then state government also directed that it be excluded from the Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary.

In 2004, news first surfaced about Tata Steel’s interest in the project. Soon after, Ratan Tata himself was approached on the issue and urged to look for alternatives in less sensitive locations. The response was reassuring, with promises to never undertake any activity that would harm the turtles or the environment. Other senior Tata officials, including the Managing Director of Tata Steel B. Muthuraman, first disputed the presence of turtles near the port site, asking for evidence and promising that ‘nothing is irreversible’ and they would even revisit the project if compelling evidence of environmental risk was presented. However, when this evidence was provided, the company accepted that turtle presence in offshore waters is possible, even probable, but insisted that the port would pose no threat.

And so today we are in a position where Tata Steel has started construction. Most NGOs in the country are reluctant to take a position that would antagonize the mighty Tatas. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has entered the scene, agreeing to provide a mitigation plan for the port, ignoring the many serious impacts the port will have that can simply not be mitigated against, and neglecting to consult with the many individuals and NGOs, some of them IUCN members.

Tata Steel and the Dhamra Port Company Limited have lost no time in touting their partnership with the IUCN as evidence of their green credentials, in an attempt to change the debate from one of prevention of harm, to mitigation of damage. This itself is a violation, or at best, a biased interpretation of the Precautionary Principle to which Tata Steel professes to adhere, as a member of the Global Compact.

The debate is now out in the court of public opinion. Over 25,000 Indians have registered their disapproval of the Tata conduct on this matter in less than ten days, via Greenpeace’s cyber campaign at www.greenpeace.org/india/turtles

Herp Talk 2: In conversation with Brian D. Horne

2008-06-03T16:34:00.004+05:30

In conversation with: Brian D. Horne, a post-doctoral fellow based at the San Diego Zoo, who is about to start research on the red-crowned roof turtle (Batagur kachuga) in the Chambal National Sanctuary in association with the Turtle Survival Alliance and Madras Crocodile Bank.

What is your research project on the Chambal about?

At the Turtle Survival Alliance/Madras Crocodile Bank Trust sponsored turtle conservation meeting in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh (UP) in 2005, we drafted an action plan for the turtles of India. The red-crowned roof turtle, Batagur kachuga was designated as the flagship species for the initiating the plan. We wanted to investigate expanding the existing program in Madhya Pradesh (MP) for hatching and releasing turtles from eggs moved to protected riverside hatcheries as well as head-starting a select number of juvenile turtles in captivity until they reach a size that presumably grants them greater survivorship when released into the wild. [Head-starting is a conservation action used to enhance numbers in the wild by incubating wild-collected eggs artificially and raising hatchlings n captivity until they reach a “safe” size before being released in the wild.]

Additionally, we needed to implement plans for gathering the basic natural history of the species as very little is currently known. We didn’t and still do not have a precise population estimate for the animals within the Chambal National Sanctuary, nor do we have an accurate estimation of the reproductive potential of the animal. We also wanted to look at the three-stripped roof turtle (Batagur dhongoka) as a species that is very closely related to B. kachuga yet is not suffering such severe population declines.

We are also investigating the patterns of temperature sex determination (TSD) in B. kachuga to ensure that the hatcheries aren’t producing a biased sex ratio. We want to see if there are simple methods of producing both sexes by manipulating nest temperatures via shading or evaporative cooling.

Sorry to interrupt. Is the assumption that the female would produce equal numbers of males and females?

The pivotal sex determining temperatures (the temperature where there is an even sex ratio, 50:50, of males and females produced) are pretty narrow, that is if it’s relatively ‘warm’ you get mostly females, if it’s relatively ‘cool’, you get mostly males. We want to avoid incubating all the eggs at either extreme of the range. We hope that eggs incubated with no other manipulations other than moving them from the nest site to a hatchery will produce mostly females and that some nests can be manipulated slightly to produce mostly males. This way we can avoid the mistakes of previous turtle conservation projects that didn’t account for TSD.

Interestingly, male B. kachuga may mature at 4 to 5 years of age, but the females take much longer than the males, possibly as long as 20 years. Juvenile females have to survive much longer than males before they can first reproduce. Thus, when the females do reach maturity they can be much older than the males they have mated with. But because of differential survival rates and differences in the number of each sex produced in any given year the adult population tends to be near an even one to one ratio. But it can be skewed, when for instance fishermen, catch a lot more adult females than males. Females are generally preferred as they are larger and have more meat than the males.

So you are going to be looking at head-starting, TSD, hatcheries, basic biology…

We’d also like to get into studying the movement patterns and we’d like to do this by using sonic telemetry. Sonic telemetry is similar to radio telemetry but instead of a transmitter that produces radio signals that travel through the air; sonic telemetry produces very small distinct sounds outside the hearing range of the turtles that can be detected long distances through water. At 1000 grams the turtles are large enough to carry transmitters with a battery life of 4-5 years; this will help us look at the survival of the head-started animals post-release. The transmitters will also help us determine the turtles’ movement patterns pre- and post- monsoon. This is especially important as we want to see if they leave the sanctuary. We will also be testing what size/age of head-started turtles have the best survivorship through a long-term mark and recapture program.

Will the animals needed for the head-starting come from the Chambal or are you looking to add more genetic diversity by bringing in hatchlings from elsewhere?

We will be collecting eggs only from the Chambal National Sanctuary as no other significant nesting populations are known to science. We have 3 hatcheries right now – one in Madhya Pradesh near the Deori Eco-Centre and two in Uttar Pradesh, further downstream. We believe the Chambal is the last stronghold for Batagur kachuga. Yet, there might be isolated individuals, even small populations, in the Brahmaputra River or maybe even the Son River.

Of all the species of turtles that live in that area, why did you choose Batagur kachuga? What is it about this particular species that makes it a flagship species?

For one, the males are very charismatic and brilliantly colourful. The females are generally larger (up to 61 cm --- a female of record size was found dead in 2007, presumably drowned in a fishing net) than the other large hardshell turtles of India (B. dhongoka, Batagur baska, and Hardella thurgii). However, using nest counts as a ‘rough’ estimate of population size there are only 200-500 adult female Batagur kachuga. In addition, we felt that we could develop a series of research criteria and conservation actions that we could then use as a model for the other species.

Why head-start?

First things first, all life stages are important and it is crucial that we also address the causes of adult mortality in our conservation actions But we knew we could start making an immediate difference by expanding our hatchery facilities. (Moving nests to hatcheries greatly reduces the number of nests that are lost to predators such as jackals and monitor lizards.) We also decided to increase the capacity of the head-starting facilities in UP as well as construct a modest facility in MP to test the validity of head-starting for B. kachuga. But our emphasis is to release the majority of the turtles from our hatcheries within 24 hrs of hatching. We are only head-starting a select number of turtles (approximately 10% of what are produced at our hatcheries) and we will be testing to see which size and/or age class has the greatest survivorship upon release, but this will take several years to determine, as stated before the turtles take years to reach sexual maturity. Many sea turtle projects that began using hatcheries and head-starting programs over twenty years ago are just now seeing a rise in adult nesting numbers. But most importantly they also address adult mortality issues, such as turtles drowning in shrimp nets and mortality caused by long-line fisheries.

It is a very complicated matter to address all the causes of adult B. kachuga mortality as it takes organizing lots of people with many different skill sets to find ways of providing alternate livelihoods options for people living along the river that are dependent on fishing and riverside agriculture (this activity destroys many potential turtle nesting areas).

It is important to remember that the turtles that we release into the rivers as hatchlings or head-started turtles will not become adults for many years. It takes a long time and many hatchlings, hundreds maybe thousands to replace an adult female in the population. By increasing the number of young turtles in the river today we hope that by the time they are mature we will have found the means of reducing the fishing pressures.

Adults have a good survivorship. The females lay a lot of eggs and live a long time. Since they have a very high mortality at the egg and juvenile stages, they have to produce a lot of individuals. The idea of head-starting is to reduce the mortality at the egg and juvenile stages, and then we can increase the number of individuals that make it into the system. Although other animals such as sea turtles and rock iguanas have been reintroduced, it is controversial with freshwater turtles. The sea turtle group has worked on this for a long time, esp. with the Kemp’s Ridley at Galveston, Texas. Millions of dollars were invested into that program and now we are starting to see the returns where the number of adults returning to nest is going up. It just takes time as these are a long-lived species so in most cases you don’t see the results for 3-5 years. One of the big things that the sea turtle group achieved was that they addressed the causes of adult mortality, which was the shrimp industry. So they developed the Turtle Exclusion Devices (TED) that reduced the by-catch mortality at the same time that they were doing the head-starting. By combining the two, hopefully you can increase the number of turtles.

With so much poaching going on, how is head-starting going to help? You are basically putting in more animals for poachers to eventually get.

Most of the turtle poaching in India focuses on soft-shells (Nilssonia gangeticus, Nilssonia hurum and Lissemys punctata) as they have a larger ratio of meat to shell and the cartilage from the shell can be dried and sold to make soup. The hard-shell turtles are mostly a by-catch. If a male or sub-adult female hard-shell drowns in a fishing net, the fishermen usually discard the animal back into the river. It’s generally the large female B. kachuga that the fishermen keep as the flesh of B. kachuga is preferred over B. dhongoka.

So what is being done to address the conservation needs of soft-shells?

Later this year we are starting a project on the Indian narrow headed softshell turtle, Chitra indica, but the reproductive biology of the softshells is quite different than most hardshell turtles. In addition, the target species N. gangeticus, N. hurum, and L. punctata are widespread, found across India in a variety of habitats, thus they are not nearly as threatened as B. kachuga which requires a very specific habitat

Do turtles have a home range, that expands or contracts seasonally?

That’s one of the questions we’d like to answer and I’ll tell you why. We are very interested in learning how it is possible that B.dhongoka has a much greater population size than B. kachuga in the same habitat. Genetically B. kachuga is more closely related to B. baska (a mangrove species found in the Sunderbans) and Batagur dhongoka is more closely related to Batagur borneoensis (formerly in the genus Callagur), which is found in Thailand and Malaysia . One hypothesis that we have is that perhaps B. dhongoka has a smaller home range and they don’t have long seasonal movements. . Thus they have a less of a chance of being captured in a fishing net. That is if you have a small home range, there are a limited number of nets you might encounter. If you have a large home range then you might come across many more nets.

But the question remains, why would the turtles have seasonal differences in home range size? One possible answer may be that because the lower Chambal River is sandy bottomed and does not have a lot of submerged vegetation (the turtles’ main food source) the turtles may have to travel long distances to find enough food to have enough energy to produce eggs each year. So it maybe possible that B. kachuga are migrating long distances to find food and are only coming downstream to nest where there is abundant high sandbars. This is another question we don’t know the answer to, but hope to answer very soon.

So it could be a seasonal migration?

We don’t know. We know when and where both species [B. kachuga and B. dhongoka] nest but we do not know much about their movements during the dry season nor during the monsoons.

The Chambal is a huge wide river. Would the turtles use the tributaries differently from the main river? For example, where do the hatchlings like to hang out?

The Chambal has few tributaries that hold water year round and during the monsoons backwaters are only created for a month of more. For the most part the river is a long straight linear system.

We know that the adults like the deep pools. Do the hatchlings go downstream with the monsoonal flood and leave the sanctuary? When the river overflows its banks, do they go into the backwaters and spend time there? We don’t know. We hope that we are going to be able to do mark-recapture studies and greater surveys downstream at different times of the year. We will be permanently marking all the turtles that are produced in our hatcheries this year (over 10,000 in 2007) in the hopes of documenting their movements.

Are you going to be PIT tagging or marking the carapace?

We are going to be using a decimal coded wire (DCW) tag that is the size of a poppy seed. It’s a very small metal wire with a unique number laser engraved on it. We use a small hypodermic needle to inject it under the skin of the right rear forelimb. With PIT tags you are able to retrieve an individual number per animal but with the DCW we just establish presence or absence using a magnetometer. The only way to read the number of the DCW tag is to surgically remove it; we will only be doing this if we find a dead animal. The reason we are going with this system is that we are hoping to mark 10,000 animals this year and we can’t afford PIT tags (about $6 USD a piece). This is more economical technology developed by the fisheries industry where they literally tag hundreds of thousands of fish in a single year. We can cohort mark the animals by placing the tags in certain bodily locations. For example, we can inject a tag in the left forelimb, right forelimb, left hindlimb, or the right hindlimb, so we can tell what year we marked them and where we caught and/or released them.

To do a TSD study don’t you need lots and lots of eggs?

We are expecting to do some of these experiments at the Croc Bank and at the Kukkrail Gharial Center from eggs produced at these facilities. But we also will be recording a great deal of data from field-collected nests. Temperatures in the wild fluctuate daily, weekly, and monthly. There’s an algorithm developed by Arthur Georges and colleagues that is called a Constant Temperature Equivalent (CTE). By recording temperatures of nests in the field with miniature dataloggers we can then calculate an equivalent temperature as if the nests were incubated in the laboratory at a constant temperature. In addition, we will be using minimally invasive endoscopy to look at the gonads of the turtles to determine if they are male or female. This is much preferred to the traditional terminal studies. By using data from field nests we will need far fewer laboratory raised animals to document the sex determination patterns of B. kachuga.

These kinds of studies that you are talking about – mark-recapture, TSD, monitoring head-started turtles – have they been conducted elsewhere on similar species?

There are some studies in Asia but a lot of the studies on large river turtles have been done in South America. For example, in Brazil they have reached a point now that their hatcheries are producing millions of hatchlings giant Amazonian river turtles per year. Last year, here in India, we produced 1,500 B. kachuga and hopefully we can get up to 2000-3000 in a few years and then slowly, slowly up.

Have there been any studies on monitoring movements of turtles in Asia?

For large river turtles in India, I don’t believe there has been another such study. There have been attempts to study movement patterns of Batagur baska in other parts of Asia but it is very difficult when the populations are small.

If turtles are reared in still water ponds and then released into rivers, what are their chances of survival?

In reintroductions of other animals like black-footed ferrets for instance, there is a learning curve when the animals are learning predator avoidance. Do B. kachuga also have to learn how to avoid large predators? That’s something we need to look into. One way to help turtles learn is by providing them with a “soft-release”. For example, in Brazil they fence off a large area of the river and temporarily keep hatchlings for a few days to a few weeks. One of the things I would like to look at is how to maximize the survivorship of the released animals. Should we release the hatchlings post monsoon directly into the river in a protected area, such as a backwater area with abundant food resources? During the head-starting program we will be working on developing the animals’ aversion to predators. Additionally, we will be making our head starting facilities with greater enrichment in hopes of developing the young turtles’ survival skills. This is a part of the project that I hope to develop further; we definitely need to learn more about the behavior of the juveniles.

As a child, you had an eastern kingsnake for a pet, how did that interest move from snakes to turtles?

I moved from snakes to lizards. At third grade, I wanted a komodo dragon so bad I drove my parents nuts. I finally got a green iguana in 1979. I was mad about lizards. In high school I went to the local ponds with my friends to catch turtles. I became really interested in studying little eastern painted turtles and had tons of them in my bedroom; plus, I had a big pen in the backyard with eastern box turtles. I also had a great mentor as an undergraduate that sent me tromping through Latin America catching turtles. I was forever hooked.

So keeping these animals in captivity really nurtured your interest in the subject. If you weren’t allowed the chance then perhaps you may have moved on to something else. So what do you feel about the pet trade?

It’s a double-edged sword. For example, the red-eared slider is wreaking havoc all around the world. They are raised by the millions in turtle ‘farming’ operations and shipped around the world. Many of them quickly die due to poor husbandry skills of their owners. But all too often people tire of them, and they are released into the wild well outside their natural range. It’s tough – having turtles as pets was so important for me that I wouldn’t want to deny that to anyone, but most people are not ready to keep a pet that will live 25-35 years or even longer in some of the tortoise species.

I have fond memories of my father stopping our Volkswagen and letting me hop out and bring a box turtle home for a few days. When I became older I starting keeping them in makeshift backyard pens for a few months each summer. These experiences were really important to me.

There are certain species that make good pets and certain species that don’t. Today, many species are being bred in captivity. It is always preferable to purchase captive bred animals over wild caught animals. When adults are removed from the wild to provide for the pet trade, it can endanger the wild populations and that’s a big problem. People who are into collecting the rarest of the rare turtles go for new species that have just been described, which can lead to small populations being driven to functional extinction, that’s a huge problem.

What was it like to be a student of Richard Siegel?

Laughs. Do you know Rich?

Have only heard of him, there are a few books in the Croc Bank library written by him…

Rich is intense, impassioned. He works an incredibly efficient six-days-a-week; he used to take one day off for his son when he was younger. Rich is very, very focused. And for me, as a young grad student, it was hard. But he prepared me incredibly well for my dissertation research. By the time I finished my masters I was ready for my Ph.D. qualifying exams, as well as designing my research. It was the hardest three years I think I had in grad school, but by far the most enjoyable.

Do you remember any particular incident that encapsulates that? Or even an amusing incident that shows what Rich is like?

Let me think for a moment. He had a big huge 15 passenger van from Southeastern Louisiana University and we’d go everywhere in it. We traveled to projects in Mississippi, Florida, Missouri, Arizona… The drive wasn’t full of music or idle chitchatting. He would quiz us on herp distribution. He’d describe the distribution and ask us what herp it was. He would give me a paper to read and ask questions like, who was the first author’s major advisor, who else was in their lab, what did they study…he’d do whole lineages of everyone… who was that person’s academic grandfather, where they came from and it was important to know which lab developed this way and which ones developed that way. He was intense but I look back on it quite fondly. It was a very different experience from my Ph.D. studies, which were laborious.

Who was your mentor then?

Willem Roosenburg at Ohio University. Willem studies terrapins in Maryland and my work was all in Mexico. Unfortunately Willem was never able to come down to Mexico during the project but he gave me ‘just enough rope to hang myself’ as he was fond of sayingk. He wanted me as a Ph.D. student to develop my own independent line of research and for me to do it by myself. He gave me great academic freedom to do what I wanted.

What was it like to be a river rat in the Louisiana bayous?

I had a flat-bottomed boat of 14 feet with a 15 hp motor. I had a cooler in front where I had a jug of cold water and another cooler for any turtles I would capture that day. I would get up early in the morning and spend all day on the river. I wore a T-shirt, baseball cap, and a pair of shorts. As a fare skinned redhead, it was the first time in my life I ever was tan. I could zip that little boat all through the bayous. I was studying the reproductive ecology of the yellow-blotched map turtle, Graptemys flavimaculata. It was so much fun. It was just me and the boat, going up and down river and into the cypress swamps. It was really something.

So you studied in America for your Masters, went to Mexico for your Ph.D. and now you are in India for your post doc…

Yeah. I would never have guessed this path if you had asked me when I was that little boy with a collection of box turtles in his back yard.

What’s embryonic diapause and embryonic aestivation?

They are two forms of developmental arrest. Embryonic diapause is an early developmental arrest when the embryo is only a few thousand cells. Embryonic aestivation occurs when the embryo is fully formed and is still inside the egg, with only residual embryonic membranes; the young turtle is just “resting” in the egg and it has a very low metabolic rate. These two types of developmental arrest allow for extended incubation periods for turtles whose distribution is tropical to near tropical in scope. Some species even have the ability to have both a ‘normal’ 75 day incubation period and a long incubation period of greater than six months. So there is a lot of variation. It allows many species to lay eggs over long periods of the year, say six to eight months, which will all hatch at about the same time. It’s a form of germ banking, like seed banking where desert plants produce many seeds that can remain dormant for years until environmental conditions are just right for the seedlings. These are two forms of developmental arrest.

Is it fairly unique to turtles?

No, a form or variant of these traits is found in everything from mosquitoes to daphnia to a variety of plants, and fish. For example, annual killifish which live in seasonal ponds have eggs that can survive in mud and decaying plant material of the drying ponds until the following year’s rainy season.

Ok, perhaps unique among higher vertebrates?

Wallabies have delayed embryonic implantation. It’s a slightly different form of embryonic diapause seen in turtles.

How do you think climate change is going to affect turtles, considering how critical temperature is in determining the sex of the next generation?

There have been a few papers that worried about the excessive production of females because the nest temperatures may increase. But there’s also a lot of plasticity in nesting events. We don’t know how the vegetation is going to change and a lot of turtles lay their nests close to vegetation. If the vegetation is growing then it produces more shade and that might cool the nest, thereby producing males. What I am most worried about for the B. kachuga is that there remains enough seasonal rains to keep the Chambal River flowing during the dry season. There are a lot of unknowns and I don’t want to say that global warming is going to doom all reptiles with TSD as some people have said. It’s a big unknown.

Herp Talk 1: In conversation with John Thorbjarnarson

2008-05-03T07:50:00.004+05:30

Photo: Payal Narain

John Thorbjarnarson is Senior Conservation Officer of the Wildlife Conservation Society based in Gainesville, Florida. John T, as he is popularly called, has worked on crocodilian conservation and research in the Americas, Africa and Asia for the last couple of decades. He was in India for the first time in April 2008, visiting the Chambal, Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary and Madras Crocodile Bank.

So how did an Icelandic guy get to be studying tropical animals?

I’m not Icelandic. My father is Icelandic. I was born in the US. But none of my Icelandic relatives really know what a reptile is. They took me behind their place once and pointed to some worms they dug out of the ground and said, “These are our snakes.” [laughter] But there is one record of a reptile from Iceland. They have a stuffed leatherback in their little tiny natural history museum in Rekjavik. My mom is Canadian. I grew up catching frogs and snakes and then graduated to crocs.

How did you get interested in crocodiles of all the things in the world?

It’s really hard to say. I remember in the late 60s watching a television program, I think by National Geographic, on the alligators in the Everglades. I was very moved by the whole thing, droughts were affecting the wildlife and hunters were taking alligators and I remember thinking that I wanted to work on alligators when I grew up. When I was thinking of graduate college I was either going to do theoretical ecology on lizards or something on crocodilians. I went to the University of Florida and started working with crocodiles as I wanted to work more on real-world issues like conservation.

You’ve also done some work on turtles and snakes.

A little bit. When I was in Venezuela I was hired by Wildlife Conservation Society as a post doc to work on reptile conservation issues – on caimans and Orinoco crocodiles, but also on a number of student turtle projects and they needed someone to look at anacondas. Nobody had looked at anacondas. A number of ranches that I had been working on for caiman and Orinoco croc work had fairly good populations of anacondas. You could go out and have reasonable expectations of finding one. At the same time Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) was interested in funding a study on them and the Venezuelan Wildlife Department wanted to develop a managed harvest of them. So we started up this anaconda project.

You’ve worked around the world on endangered species of crocodiles in the Americas, Africa and Asia. The common thread through their stories is the slaughter of the 1950s and 60s combined with habitat loss. Is there one single conservation paradigm that works in conserving these different species and in different political regimes?

There are basically two types of crocodilians – ones that have significant habitat and others that don’t. Many species were hunted for their skins. But once the uncontrolled hunting ended, mortality rates went down and populations recovered. Those that had limited habitat did not. So species like the gharial, Chinese alligator and the Orinoco crocodile have had a very difficult time recovering basically because there is very little habitat left. It also makes them vulnerable to a whole series of other factors that affect their conservation.

You are also working on a lot of really endangered species like the Chinese alligator, Philippine croc, Siamese croc, Orinoco croc and Cuban croc. And now you have just returned from the Chambal and seen some of the threats that the gharial face. Do you see any parallels between all these different situations?

There are a lot of parallels between the gharial and the Orinoco crocodile. The Orinoco has a fairly narrow snout for a crocodile; it’s basically the closest thing to a New World gharial. Both the gharial and the Orinoco live in the same kind of habitat (big sandy rivers) and both are hole-nesters. So they face the same threats to a certain degree although it is a lot more intense with the gharial due to the human population pressures. The gharial is by far the most specialized of the crocodilians and it seems to be the most sensitive to any kind of disturbance.

You’ve spent a long time looking at these crocs. Is any one of them looking up?

They are all looking up I think. The gharial is going through a tough time now. It’s much easier to be optimistic of the long term conservation of crocodilians than say, a rhino or a tiger, animals that require huge amounts of undisturbed habitat. Crocodilians, in most cases, can get by with fairly small patches of habitat, the gharial being a possible exception to that. The Chinese alligator is looking up because the Chinese government is getting more involved in the conservation of the wild populations than just captive breeding. The Orinoco crocodile numbers are increasing. The Siamese crocodile is hanging in there; it’s still got some habitat and the numbers in some areas are increasing. So in most cases, even Critically Endangered species, they are looking up.

A lot of countries are promoting sustainable use as one of the conservation paradigms for crocs especially. In India, critics cite the case of the Siamese crocodile as what could possibly go wrong with croc farming. What do you think happened there?

It’s a very unusual situation compared to most other sustainable use programs for crocodilians. It isn’t sustainable use; it is commercial farming because your population in captivity is totally separated from the wild. There is no direct link between the wild and captive populations unlike the ranching programs. But the problem is that you can’t talk about sustainable use of a lot of species as it has to be based on a recovered or recovering population. The Siamese crocodile is a Critically Endangered species where there are a huge number of animals in captivity and there is a big market for their skins, big market for live animals in the farms. People would go out and capture baby crocodiles because they knew they could sell them to farms and make a lot of money. This is happening all over Laos, in particular, Cambodia, to some extent in Thailand and Vietnam.

You were also involved with the reintroduction of Orinoco crocs. How did that program work?

It was a little bit of captive breeding and also head-starting. We collected the eggs of one particular population in a National Park, reared and released them back at the same site. But there is also a captive breeding program. Every year captive breeders are cranking out close to 500 young animals which are reared for one year and released into the wild in 4 or 5 Protected Areas. It’s not a very proactive approach to conservation; it’s reactionary. What are we going to do with these 500 animals that are one year old? We have to release them somewhere. It’s provided a lot of animals; more than 7000 have been released into the wild now. In some areas, there are good indications that populations have been reestablished and are growing again. But the program needs a re-adjustment; it is being driven by all the animals that need to be released every year.

Did you monitor the animals after they were released?

When we first started the program in 1989-90 we did a radio telemetry project for one year at one site. There has been periodic monitoring at other sites; however, there has been nothing very systematic. That is really one of the weak points of the whole program; it’s not terribly well organized. Part of the reason for that is the Venezuelan government has been very little involved with it; it has mostly been a group of NGOs and individuals. It really requires a central authority like the government to do things in a well-planned and coordinated manner and that has never happened.

Did the released hatchlings hang around the site of release for that whole year?

We had radios on 6 animals, of which one died. It was killed by an indigenous person; they will kill the caiman but traditionally will not eat the crocodile, they say it tastes bad. But when they were first released the crocodiles acted like caiman; they could be easily approached. This fellow thought it was a caiman and shot it with an arrow. When he found out that it was a crocodile and that it had a radio tag on it, he thought he was going to get arrested. He ran off to live with some relatives in another part of the country until we told him it was ok to come back. But all of the others survived and grew quite well. I think the furthest they moved from the release site was about 25 km. Half of them moved up stream and the other down. But by and large, they stayed close to the release area.

Are these captive bred animals that are reared in still water ponds able to deal with currents when released into rivers? Rivers being linear, it’s hard to control their movements upstream or downstream out of a protected area. If they leave the precincts of the area then you’ve lost them. How does it work for the Orinoco?

It was a fairly long section of the river. At least one bank was in a National Park and the other bank was nominally a buffer zone.

How long is the river section?

About 200 km. This particular park, like some others in Venezuela, is a paper park. What eventually ended this project was a period of civil unrest where the local colonists supported by some unscrupulous state politicians were against the National Park authority and just made it impossible for scientists to go back in there. So we had to terminate the project. The people were worried about the crocodiles because they are potentially dangerous. Unlike the gharial, they do occasionally attack people, but that’s quite rare. The indigenous people, Yaruro, who lived around the release site, eat the eggs and they would also capture the baby crocs to sell as pets. That was one of the major threats. So working with these people and head-starting are the best ways to bolster the population.

So you think that there was really no mortality because these animals were being released into the rivers?

No. The first batch we released with radios were 3-year olds. Every year after that we released one-year old animals. They did fine, no problems. Crocodilians are very hard-wired; they are born knowing what to do. They don’t really forget that even if they spent 30 years sitting in a cattle trough in the second floor of the Bronx Zoo. Some of the Chinese alligators that were released in a simulated wild environment for the breeding program in Louisiana in the late 1970s had spent almost their entire lives in these cattle troughs upstairs in the reptile department of the Bronx Zoo. Within a year of being released they were breeding. So they tend to be fairly adaptable. In the case of the gharial, the question is whether to release them as one-year olds or three-year olds. The idea of releasing them at three years is that they are big enough to not fall prey to any of the potential predators up there. But if you release one-year olds they would be big enough to avoid 90-95% of their potential predators and they might be better adapted to their environments. I really don’t think it is necessary to keep them till they are three- year olds. What would really be good is to do a comparative study of survivorship and movement patterns, do a radio telemetry study of released one-year olds and three-year olds and see what the differences are.

You were also studying conservation success. What happened as a result of the come-back of the black caiman and the American crocodile?

In both cases they were hunted heavily for their skins and the populations were quite low in the 1960s and 70s. So when professional hunting was controlled, the populations started to recover. The black caiman recovered more than the American crocodile because its habitat was more intact. But American crocodile populations also went up and because they are both large crocodilians you had the problem of increased number of conflicts with people, which is the ecological result of conservation success. It is a problem but it is also an indication of success, because there are more animals.

Were there any other positive results?

We’ve seen ecotourism go up in some areas as people have reasonable expectations of seeing a crocodile. In some areas like Florida, where populations have recovered you really start to see how people and crocodilians can get along, at least with a species that does not actively hunt or eat people.

You have studied the American crocodile in 9 different countries. What are the challenges in conserving a species across international borders?

In 2002 at the Crocodile Specialist Group meeting in Gainesville, Florida, we had a workshop attended by people from throughout the range to holistically look at what the status was, what the conservation management issues were. And that, I think, is an interesting model for doing other species of crocodilians. The reality is that it is really on a country by country basis because of the politics. There are some countries like Ecuador, Columbia, El Salvador where populations are still very, very low in large part due to habitat destruction. And in other countries like Cuba, Honduras, they are talking of commercially harvesting the species because they are so abundant. So you have the whole gamut from Critically Endangered to abundant animals. For each country it will be different, not only because of the politics but also the habitat.

There are probably about 100 Chinese alligators in the wild and more than 10,000 in captivity. The habitat is non-existent. What is the strategy to bring them back if the habitat has been converted to rice fields?

There are probably about 150 in the wild now because there have been several successful nests in the last couple of years. It’s going to depend on habitat restoration. There are still some habitats where you could reintroduce alligators. It’s a question of finding those areas and then working out some approach with the local communities to build tolerance or even bring benefit from having the alligators. So there are a number of approaches of working with them – alternative livelihoods. Rice farming is not very compatible with having alligators but if they grow some other crops then the little ponds there could be devoted to alligators. Also China is trying to create a series of wetland parks as they are getting more worried about water issues particularly for the large cities like Shanghai. They are also into green issues more and more and they want to set aside protected areas, mostly the kind of parks where you can go strolling or paddling in boats. We can also use some of them for wildlife and alligators can easily fit in. They are so small and so inoffensive that it is usually not too much of a difficulty.
So the idea is to first, improve the areas where the alligators are found today by working with the local farming communities who live in that area and second, find new areas and work with those communities where reintroduction can happen while at the same time creating the wetland systems and restoring wildlife.

Who is doing that? Are you part of that project?

Yeah. We’ve been working with the provincial and national government in China. It’s slowly developing. We haven’t had a lot of funding to do this so that is one of the big problems. There is more and more pressure now to be releasing animals. We tried to create a little bit of competition among the provinces. Anhui province is where all the wild alligators are now and they consider the alligator to be a rare animal. But then if we can get the other provinces involved, then there is a spirit of competition that comes into play. It’s been going little by little. We just had a workshop in China to downlist the Chinese alligator from Critically Endangered to Endangered within 10 years with a series of reintroduction programs.

How did the reintroduction of the 2003 batch go? You released 3 young adults.

Very well. They are all still there. Two of the animals were females, one nested in 2004 and in 2005, both of them did. Since then both of the released females have been nesting along with a native female.

Is the Nile croc one species or two?

It all depends on how you define a species. It’s becoming more and more difficult to distinguish these days. Morphology is telling you one thing and the genetics tells you another. Genetically, they are two very distinct groups of crocodiles. Morphologically, we have not examined them in a detailed fashion. We still need more information. But the dwarf crocodiles are probably going to be three different groups. The Congo animals were originally described as a separate genus, and then it was considered a separate species and a sub-species. But it is very, very distinct from the West African and they are both very distinct from the ones in Gabon and Cameroon. So they are really 3 different groups there – this is the work of my student, Mitch Eaton. The problem is if you take the 11 species of the genus Crocodylus, the genetic differences between them are very small but morphologically they are quite distinct. Among the dwarf crocs you get little differences in the morphology but genetically there is a huge amount of variation.

So did you manage to extract genetic material from the mummified crocs of the pharaohs? If so what species were they?

That’s one of the things we wanted to do with the Nile crocodile. The question comes down to, if there are two different species, which one is the Nile crocodile. There is no type locality or type specimen for the Nile crocodile but based on the original description the type locality should be limited to the lower Nile in Egypt. So we need to know what animals were there historically. There are no crocodiles there now but there are hundreds, probably thousands, of mummified crocodiles from 2000-3000 years ago. So the idea was to extract DNA from those and compare it to the two populations to figure out which one is the Nile crocodile.

How is climate change going to affect crocodiles do you think?

In two ways. First is by rising sea levels. The most vulnerable is going to be the Cuban crocodile which lives in a freshwater area along the coast. If the ocean line comes up one metre it can flood out all the nesting habitat. We will need to think about adjacent upland areas that would become croc habitat in the future and have long-terms plans for the protection of these areas. Second, it may open up potential habitat in the north where the Chinese alligator can be reintroduced. It will probably not affect where they are now. In a natural system if the northern hemisphere warms up, it may be beneficial for the overall latitudinal distribution of animals. In the case of the few isolated protected areas that cannot happen and a lot of time and energy, sweat and blood have gone into establishing them. But with climate changing so rapidly in a century (or less) they may not be suitable for the species that live there now. Unless there is some thought given to corridors that will allow latitudinal migration of animals as the planet warms they may be in trouble.

In India, most of our rivers in the north are glacier fed. So we’re going to see more floods in particular seasons.

Yes, the Girwa (Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary) is going to suffer from that. The Chambal is not glacier fed but if there are shifts in rainfall, it could become a dry basin or it may switch the other way. For riverine species, that is another threat and the gharial is going to be the most impacted by this.

So is WCS partnering with the Gharial Conservation Alliance on gharial conservation?

Yeah. One of the reasons I am here in India now is to get a better overview of how WCS might effectively do this. Right now WCS is in the midst of an organization wide shift to focus more on specific groups of species and crocs might be one of these and if so this could potentially provide more funding to invest in gharial conservation. Right now, we have no dedicated funding for gharial work. Another thing is that the Bronx zoo (part of WCS) is thinking of re-establishing a gharial exhibit. Importing animals would require supporting in situ conservation efforts. Under those circumstances, the zoo end of WCS may donate money to gharial conservation.

Besides the funding, are you considering actively collaborating in research and surveys?

Yes. But I’m the only crocodile person in WCS. If we had more money we may be able to hire somebody else. I really want to come back, it’s been great here. The gharial is such an amazing species. It reminds me a lot of the Orinoco crocodile that I worked on back in the 1980s and 90s. I like hole nesting species because then you can go along rivers, visit sandy beaches where they nest. With the non-hole nesting species, you gotta go bush-whacking in the forest and marshes to find their nests.

When you did the surveys in Myanmar in 1999 did you hear of any reports of gharial or mugger?

Yes. There are persistent reports of gharial. I think in some cases they may be misidentified Tomistoma [false gharial], probably found in the southernmost part of Myanmar. Historically the gharial were in the north. The Irrawaddy is a perfect gharial river. They got wiped out of there by people. There is a lot of evidence of subfossils of the gharial throughout the Irrawaddy from the Pleistocene and later. Then there is the Kaladan river which is between the Irrawaddy and the Ganges which may have had gharial. There are probably saltwater crocodiles living in the upper stretches so they may have been the cause of the misidentification too. Nobody has done any crocodilian surveys of that river. The few historical records found are of saltwater crocodiles.

If you say the Irrawaddy is a perfect gharial river, is there a possibility of reintroduction of the gharial there?

Yeah, there is. It would require setting up preserves along critical stretches of the river. There was some discussion of setting up a reserve on the main Irrawaddy river for the Irrawaddy dolphin and river turtles. But something like that is politically and socially very difficult because there are a lot of people there going up and down. You won’t get a long enough stretch of river. But the main priority for the gharial is to focus conservation action on areas where it is found now.

What does your Burmese nickname “kyunpatgyi” mean?

It’s a giant mythical crocodile that they say lives in that area, Meinmalha Kyun Wildlife Sanctuary. They say it swims all the way around the 35-40 km long by 10 km wide island and that it’s a 30 feet long crocodile. I don’t remember why I got the name. I think it involves working a long time in Burma with a lot of beer.

Observations on the reactions of the water monitor lizard (Varanus salvator) to toxins

2008-04-07T11:08:00.004+05:30

Water monitor lizards have been breeding at the Centre for Herpetology/Madras Crocodile Bank (CFH/MCB) since 1989. Hatchlings are reared separately and similar sized conspecifics of all age classes are kept together to avoid injury and cannibalism. Several healthy and active juvenile lizards averaging 40 cm TBL (total body length) were placed in an enclosure which had previously been used to rear frogs and toads. It was assumed that all the amphibians had been removed, however on of the young monitors was observed digging out and biting a small toad, Bufo fergusonii, ca. 5 cm SVL (snout-vent length). We caught the lizard, which released the toad uninjured. After 2 hours the lizard was lethargic, would not walk and would not raise its head. It died within an hour after that. We presume that death occurred as a result of toad poisoning. A perusal of the literature did not reveal any information on the toxicology of Bufo fergusonii. It is speculated that the toad, being a species that occurs in the dry zones of northern Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Sri Lanka (Daniel 2002) would not be sympatric with the wetlands dwelling Varanus salvator. The latter would have no experience with, nor immunity to this obviously toxic toad.

Literature cited

Daniel, J.C. 2002. The book of Indian Reptiles and Amphibians. Oxford University Press, Mumbai

Hopping Mad in Meghalaya

2008-03-22T16:29:00.003+05:30

Text and photographs by Stephen Mahony.

Having spent several months of the monsoon in the hot and humid plains of Bangladesh, Tripura and southern Assam, my journey north to Guwahati was to take me through the beautiful mountains of Meghalaya. Since the relentless heat of sizzling Guwahati lay ahead I decided on a short break in the hill station, state capital of Meghalaya, Shillong. My home from home for the next few days would be a little tourist lodge in a busy part of town known as Police Bazaar. Upon arrival, it seems I was not the only one seeking to cool off in the clouds as the guesthouse was all but full leaving the only option of a small underground single room with of course, no windows. Not to be put off by the flickering fluorescent light in my little cell, I told myself “Who cares, after all a room is only for sleeping in.” And I set off exploring.

It was Sunday, and when I enthusiastically stormed out of the lodge looking for action, I suddenly realised that nothing was open. A few hours passed wandering the lonely streets of the city past the countless closed shops until I found myself coming ever closer to a large forested mountain at the edge of the city. I thought “Perfect for herping”. After almost an hour of walking uphill, carefully scanning the ground and sparse low foliage amongst the old coniferous trees, I stopped for a while, exhausted from the climb and disheartened. I had found nothing, not even the commonest frog or skink. It was about four in the afternoon when I began to make my way back down the hillside. As the trail rounded a bend it came close to a very steep sided valley, at the bottom of which I could hear a stream. I figured, if I don’t find anything down by the stream, then I’ll give up on this patch and find somewhere better tomorrow. So carefully and somewhat nerve-wrackingly I climbed down the slope, regularly alarming myself with how much trust I put on a clump of grass or a skinny twig precariously sticking out of the ground to take my weight. After what seemed like an eternity of crumbling rocks and heart stopping moments I finally found myself at the bottom, on level ground again.

As I regained my composure (and breath) from the corner of my eye I spotted movement on the steep bank I had just descended. I froze, stared and waited. Movement again. A small brown skink. I had come across a sub-adult Himalayan litter skink Sphenomorphus indicus on its evening forage. Ok its not quite as exciting as a King cobra, but after a few hours of nothing, I happily took a few minutes to watch it busily poking its head into every nook and crevice while flicking its little black tongue as it moved off into dense undergrowth. Spirits lifted, I began to look around with greater enthusiasm.

I made my way to the edge of the narrow rocky stream. It looked promising; the stream was about three meters wide and probably no more than half a meter deep, and it had a good flow. More importantly its banks were covered in lush, bushy vegetation, a big difference from the sparse grasses and pine needle strewn forest floor on the hillside above. By now dusk was falling and slowly the evening chorus of crickets, katydids and cicadas began to pick up in intensity. The oncoming darkness was of no concern, by now well used to regular power cuts that really are a fact of life in many areas of Northeast India, I would very rarely venture anywhere without a head torch, so I was in no rush to get back to my little prison cell in the lodge.

Interested in all shapes and forms of creepy-crawlies, I decided to dedicate a little time tracking down some of the chirping, whistling and clicking, six legged musicians which made up the evening orchestra, while all the time keeping an ear tuned for a telltale croak of a frog. Most of the bugs proved quite easy to locate amongst the tangle of bushes, but one managed to elude me on my first two attempts. It produced a very loud and brief click…. click… click-click…..
click-click-click. No matter how close I thought I was getting to the source, it always seemed to be coming from the next bush and then the next bush increasing in volume as I got closer and closer. Finally, after ten minutes of meticulously scanning every twig, branch and leaf of a bush I found the culprit. To my surprise it had four legs instead of six; it was a tiny Bush frog of the genus Philautus, possibly P. shillongensis, a little known species currently considered endemic to the Shillong area. I watched for several minutes amazed at how a tiny frog, no bigger than your thumbnail could make such a huge noise. He didn’t seem particularly concerned by my presence and continued calling in the torchlight, inflating his balloon like vocal sac to the extent that it actually doubled his original body size.

After a few minutes of observation I turned back to the stream. While spending such a long time searching at close quarters for something by torchlight, it is very easy not to notice the darkness creeping in as dusk becomes night. But that night, with heavy clouds in the sky, there was not even a hint of moonlight and it truly was the darkest of dark. The air cooled down, the humidity rose and if you are looking for frogs you know its time for the night shift. As I carefully made my way upstream along the edge of the bank, I suddenly heard a familiar frog call, then immediately after another called from the other bank, then another. It reminded me of home in the suburbs of Dublin, at night a neighbour’s dog would suddenly bark and would be immediately answered by another dog nearby until, soon every dog in the neighbourhood would be going nuts. Well that’s also what happens with these little frogs. I had experience finding with these guys before so I knew exactly where to look, and lo and behold, I soon found myself looking straight at a small orange Myanmar pelobatid toad, Xenophrys species, usually referred to in literature as X. parva. These interesting little stream “toads” appear to be quite territorial and widely space themselves out along the stream banks. Previously, I had recorded the call of a male while observing a population in Bangladesh. During playback, the same male immediately confronted the recorder with a different and more vigorous territorial call, determined to ward off this invisible intruder from his patch of riverbank.

Although members of this genus were often referred to in past publications as toads, Xenophrys has no relation to the true toads belonging to the family Bufonidae. In appearance most true toads have parotid glands, densely tubercular and texturally dry skin which allows them to be less reliant on moist habitats, whereas the Xenophrys have primarily smooth, highly permeable moist skin with no parotid glands and small widely spaced tubercles and ridges on their skin and thus would more correctly be referred to as frogs. Myanmar pelobatid toad is perhaps one of the many common names which could cause confusion amongst the non scientific community. X. parva was actually originally described from India and at that time the genus Xenophrys was wrongly placed in the family Pelobatidae (hence pelobatid) and later moved to Megophryidae. Those relying only on common names beware!

Perhaps another hour had passed as I slowly made my way up stream past countless calling Xenophrys and Philautus, regularly stopping to watch some of the many species of stick insects actively feeding on their favourite plants, or some large wolf spiders hunting amongst the rocks. Usually, I would get to a point where I would try to convince myself “Ok, I’ll just go as far as the next bend in the stream, then turn back.” But once that point is reached I’d talk myself to going as far as the next big rock and so on until it literally gets so late that I end up power-walking back to the last restaurant open in the area I am staying in, for a late dinner. This occasion was certainly no different, I reckon I was on my third “last bend” and fifth “last rock” when I came across a real treat. Sitting about 10 cm from the surface of the water on the vertical face of a large mossy boulder was a small Waterfall frog of the genus Amolops. This genus has a large number of species, many of which are poorly known to science and identification has often led to confusion, even amongst experts. This individual appears to be quite similar to A. granulosus, which was originally described from Meghalaya. They are excellently adapted to their habitat, sporting large digital pads, easily rivalling those of the most arboreal tree frog species, for sticking to the slippery rock surfaces. Even their tadpoles have a large suction disk on their ventral surface, which they use to stick to the rock, thus preventing them from being washed downstream during floods.

Thoroughly satisfied with my find and knowing that I now have quite a long walk back to the lodge, the little Amolops gave me a perfect finisher to the evening. I climbed onto the bank and started back along a trail running parallel to the stream. As you would expect, it is not easy, or more importantly, safe to be rushing along forest trails at night, so despite building up a good hunger and not knowing how late “too late” was for getting a meal, I know well the importance of keeping a very close eye to the ground and overhanging bushes for venomous snakes. Unfortunately, or as many would think, luckily, I didn’t find any. The trail crisscrossed the stream in several places, and at one such crossing, I noticed a small wet patch on a boulder in the middle of the stream. I stopped; the only explanation I could think of was that it must have been left there by a frog recently! Perhaps another Amolops, I thought, as I shone the torchlight over the nearby rocks and boulders. Like following breadcrumbs I found a trail of several rocks with the mysterious wet patches, until something jumped right across the torch beam and landed on the bank. Despite previously only having seen photographs of this species, I immediately recognised who I was looking at. A very distinctive medium sized frog with a vivid green dorsum and highly contrasting dark brown flanks, a Ranid known as Odorrana chloronota. This genus of frogs has caused a lot of confusion amongst scientists over the last century, whereby species have been swapped back and forth between at least five different genera. Recently in 2007, phylogenetic analysis has finally resolved the longstanding debate and these frogs were settled into genus Odorrana, the name refers to an odorous, and in some cases quite poisonous secretion exuded from the skin by members of the genus.

I pushed on along the trail, eventually crossing the steep bank I had risked life and limb climbing down earlier that evening. As it turned away from the streamside I came to a spot where the bushes on both sided formed a fairly narrow gap to slip through. Remembering an old, but true story a friend had once told me about a guy being bitten in the face by a pit viper, I was not going through until I gave it a good look. Again unfortunately no pit viper, however, on the plus side there was a small lizard sleeping on the end of a leaf. A closer look revealed its identity, a juvenile Green fan throated lizard Ptyctolaemus gularis, an agamid species of which very little is known. It has, in the past been reported as relatively common in the vicinity of Shillong, however is thought to be very patchy over the remainder of its range in northeast India, Bangladesh and Myanmar. What I find quite interesting about this species is that males do not possess a spiny crest like that of the Common garden lizard, Calotes versicolor. When relaxed the males’ napes and backs are relatively rounded, however when threatened or excited, they have the ability by contracting muscles on the back to raise a surprisingly high crest of skin, in an obvious attempt to make themselves look considerably larger. But the best the little guy sitting on the leaf could do when he woke up was to extend his still underdeveloped dewlap on his throat and show me his teeth. Thoroughly satisfied with the evening’s herping adventure, I squelched my way back into the city to hunt down a large chicken curry with rice.

As I approached the street where my lodge was, the dinner situation was not looking good. All of the restaurants I passed along the way were already closed. Eventually passing a small lane I noticed light peering out from under the half pulled shutter of a hotel. At this point I should mention, “Hotel” in these parts can refer to a business which provides lodging and a restaurant, lodging with no restaurant or often, as it was in this case, restaurant with no lodging. Luckily the friendly manager invited me in to join him and the remaining staff to finish off the last of the day’s food and we chatted late into the night over a bottle of local whiskey.

Caiman lizards at the Croc Bank

2008-03-22T12:23:00.005+05:30

After a year and a half of paperwork, we have finally got a group of caiman lizards (Dracaena guianensis) at MCBT in mid February. These lizards are found in Peru and Brazil, and are exclusive snail eaters. They are in an enclosure landscaped with rocks, branches overhanging their pond, and a small shade tree. We've already observed courtship and mating, which is exciting since the only other place in the world that breeds this species in captivity is the Prague Zoo, where we got them from. Thousands of these lizards are illegally harvested for their skins.

Gharial Crisis Management meeting at the WWF-India office - 7th Feb

2008-02-08T16:46:00.000+05:30

Fritz Huchzermeyer summarized the vet findings thus far - there are several issues relating to the mass die-off of the gharial that cannot be explained at this time, including why the gharial appears to have been exclusively affected and also why only a certain size class was affected. All available evidence indicates that the gharial died of kidney failure and that the probable cause is an unidentified toxin. The nvestigation will now be twin-pronged: (1) Detection and identification of toxins in the gharial tissues, (2) identifying pollutants in the river system. The Yamuna River is a likely source of these pollutants and should be the focus of further studies given its proximity to the affected region of the Chambal. These environmental studies will include examination of fish, industrial activities, and change in hydrological and climatic conditions. Mortality caused by protozoan parasites and other infections have been totally ruled out. Rom Whitaker suggested the inclusion of an ichthyologist and a hydrologist on the team to facilitate the next stage of investigations. The DRDO labs are to do the toxicology tests. Reports are yet to be received from IVRI, and Mukteshwar Research Institute.

The experts advised against any releases of captive reared gharial until the situation stabilizes.

Continuing gharial deaths

2008-02-04T19:52:00.000+05:30

More information filtering in from the Etawah base camp of River Watch (a GCA-WWF-India initiative):

Death toll: 95

Available evidence is consistent that it was a single event that caused this die-off of gharial and not a continuing one. Meaning something happened probably months before the first week of Dec that continues to kill gharial, although at a decreasing rate now. There is no indication of infectious disease. So the focus now rests on toxins. It causes the kidney to malfunction resulting in a lethal build up of uric acid in all the joints of the body, a condition known as gout. It is so painful that the animals are unable to move – they cannot even haul themselves out of the water to bask during a time of record low temperatures. Dead animals were covered with algae, a sign that they had not left the water for some time. Members of the team say it is really sad to watch the dying animals as they roll in the water, seemingly unable to float the right way up.

The Chambal flows into the Yamuna most of the year. However, during the monsoon, the Yamuna flows into the Chambal for several kilometres. The toxic poisoning of the relatively clean Chambal could have very well occurred then. A recent colliform count for the Chambal was 21 while that of the Yamuna was 14,000! There was a fish die-off within the last 2 days in the Yamuna.

Along side these indications, there seems to be an enormous ecological upheaval in the making. Tilapia, an invasive fish from Africa, seems to be making visible inroads into the Chambal from the Yamuna. The implications for the fish predators of the Chambal is unknown.

The dead gharial found yesterday was unusual in having no fat deposits and appeared to have not fed for a long time.

Four gharial of the same size class as the dead gharial were captured yesterday in the Ajab Singh Kheda stretch of the Chambal River for detailed veterinary examination.

Over the next few days histopathological reports are expected.

Agencies and Institutes actively collaborating on this:

Forest Departments of UP and MP
Jiwaji University
River Watch (GCA-WWF-India)
Wildlife SOS
IUCN/CSG
IVRI
ITRC
Madras Crocodile Bank/Centre for Herpetology

Update - Gharial Crisis

2008-02-01T20:28:00.000+05:30

Death toll: 93

On the 27th January Brian Stacy, a pathologist from the University of Florida and Aniruddha Belsare, the GCA veterinarian along with experts from other agencies and institutes such as IVRI, Wildlife SOS and Forest Department conducted 4 autopsies and found significant gout – both visceral and articulate. Even the finger joints and tail joints had uric acid deposits. However, the animals seemed in good condition with a lot of fat. This suggests kidney failure as a result of toxic poisoning or disease. A couple of days later a fresh kidney sample was obtained for further analysis. Results are awaited.

To digress a bit – the massive die-off of vultures in India was also a result of gout. It took a few years to pinpoint the cause as diclofenac, a commonly used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used on livestock. No other animal or bird in these areas was noticeably affected by diclofenac as the vultures were.

Rom remembered that an adult female gharial had died at the London Zoo as a result of gout and nephritis in the 1970s. The registrar of the zoo in looking for the full post mortem report in their archives

In the meantime, Fritz Huchzermeyer (Vice-Chairman of the IUCN-Croc Specialist Group’s Veterinary advisory group, and Paolo Martelli (Ocean Parks, Hong Kong) have also joined the team and more autopsies confirmed the same diagnosis: gout. Fritz also diagnosed possible osteoporosis which he said indicated a population suffering from stress. Communication channels have been opened with diclofenac specialists who worked on vultures to share methodology, testing procedures, etc. Avenues of investigation include a diclofenac type of toxin that targets a specific species, or it could be something totally new that we haven’t even thought of yet.

According to the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department autopsy records, about 60% of the dead gharials were male, approx. 21% were females and about 18% unknown (probably because the carcasses were too decomposed). We do not know if this indicates that males are particularly vulnerable to poisoning or whether they form a larger proportion of the population. The affected animals range from 160 to 410 cm in length, the average being 250 cm.

Samuel Martin of La Ferme aux Crocodiles, France joined the team today. He’s the only vet with prior gharial experience having worked on the conservation project in Nepal.

Also see http://www.wwfindia.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/
freshwater_wetlands/freshwater_species/gharial/
gharial_updates.cfm

Gharial Conservation Alliance - Press Release

2008-01-22T10:22:00.000+05:30

Gharial Conservation Alliance - Press Release: January 18, 2008
Investigations Continue Into Mass Deaths of Indian Gharial in Chambal River

Death toll stands at 81 as unknown illness sweeps through the most important breeding population of critically endangered gharial crocodiles.

National Chambal River Sanctuary, India.

January, 18, 2008: An unknown illness continues to kill gharial in the National Chambal River Sanctuary, which spans the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan. As of 17th of January 2008, 81 gharial have died with no definitive cause having been identified. Though the deaths were initially confined to a 35 km stretch of the Chambal River, between Barhi and Chakranagar, the mysterious illness has now spread and dead gharial are being found further upstream. The Chambal River contains the largest of only 3 breeding populations of gharial left in the world. Estimates from 2007 gharial surveys indicated only 200-300 breeding adult gharial remaining in the wild, with only a few of those being adult males. Classified as Critically Endangered in the 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, this unique species is being pushed even further toward extinction by this recent epidemic.

The dead gharial have been sub-adults and young adults (5.5-10 feet long); no mortalities of juveniles have been reported. The sex ratio of the dead gharial has not been definitively determined, but a significant number are believed to have been males. There were no external physical signs of injury, and post-mortem investigations of the animals indicated deaths were not due to drowning in fishing nets, one of the most common causes of mortality in gharials. Though lead and cadmium as well as a protozoan parasite (Klossiela species) were found in the dead gharial, none of these has been determined as the cause of the deaths. There have been no reports of deaths in other river wildlife, and so far water quality tests have not revealed any toxins or pollution in the area where the dead gharial have been found. However this does not rule out the possibility of gharial feeding on fish contaminated with toxins or pathogens that may migrate from the heavily polluted Yamuna River, which joins the Chambal at the sanctuary’s lowest extremity.

One hypothesis for the cause of death is a condition called Pansteatitis, which is caused by the consumption of rotten fish. This condition, which has killed crocodiles in South Africa following a die-off of fish, causes hardening of the crocodile’s fat, leading to decreased mobility of the animal, and ultimately death by starvation 6-8 weeks from consumption of the fish. The fatty degeneration of the liver tissue caused by this condition can appear similar to the signs of cirrhosis, and the most significant post-mortem sign of Pansteatitis is deep yellow to orangecolored fat. It is yet to be determined whether this condition caused the gharial deaths.

The State Forest Departments of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, under whose jurisdiction the tri-state National Chambal River Sanctuary lies, have been proactive in trying to deal with the gharial die-off. Intensive monitoring by dedicated staff of the Madhya Pradesh FD has been ongoing since the start of the crisis in early December, and a collaborative effort with the Gharial Conservation Alliance and WWF-India continues. Mr. Suhas Kumar, Chief Conservator of Forests was the first to circulate a veterinary and toxicology report update to the international community. As a result of this, the International Conservation Union Crocodile Specialist Veterinary Group (IUCN-CSVG) was galvanized into action. Three of the IUCN/CSVG vet doctors are scheduled to arrive in India in the last week of January, with assistance from the IUCN Crocodile Specialist Group and the Crocodilian Advisory Group of the American Zoological Association. The San Diego Zoological Society is funding the trip of a vet pathologist from the University of Florida who has previously worked at the Madras Crocodile Bank in Tamil Nadu, India. Several specialist labs in India, such as The Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI), The Industrial Toxicology Research Centre (Lucknow), High Security Labs (Bhopal), and Vet College Jubbalpur, have carried out tests and will continue to be involved in ongoing investigations. The Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, recently held a high-level crisis meeting in New Delhi and has made the gharial issue top priority. The collaboration of international croc vets, Indian vets and labs, the tri-state Forest Departments, Indian researchers, the Gharial Conservation Alliance, and WWF-India will hopefully uncover the cause of the gharial deaths and halt the spread of this epidemic to the remaining gharial population.

The gharial (Gavialis gangeticus) is a unique species of crocodile, characterized by long thin jaws and the bulbous growth at the end of males’ snouts. The last remaining species of an ancient line of crocodilians, gharial were once found across Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Bhutan. Now only a few viable populations remain in India and Nepal. Gharial are fish-eaters that live in freshwater, and are not known to attack or kill humans. Once brought back from the brink of extinction in the 1970’s, gharial populations have again plummeted, primarily due to destruction of their river habitats and drowning in fishing nets.

Note: The GCA is based at the Madras Crocodile Bank and Rom Whitaker is the Chairman of the Alliance.

2007-12-06T11:29:00.001+05:30

Some of you might have read about our clutch of Dwarf caiman (Paleosuchus palpebrosus) eggs laid in September. Well, after about 90 days of incubation I began to get a wee bit anxious and contacted Paleosuchus expert Colin Stevenson. Colin put my mind at rest saying these guys can take over 100 days to hatch! After a breath-taking 104 days of incubation, 6 dwarf caiman finally hatched. I was recording incubation temperatures 2-3 times a day, and on 5th December I heard tiny grunts emitting from the Styrofoam incubation box these eggs were in. The little guys were very alert and defensive once out of the egg, and I got nipped more than once with teeth that were not really there. Now I feel like a proud daddy! Attached are some of the better pictures I took, courtesy of Sujan’s camera ‘coz mine died whilst shooting herps in the Andaman’s. Incubation temperature averaged 30.1 C, and ranged between 26.8 - 32.1 C.

Surviving the tsunami at the Galathea Bridge, Great Nicobar Island

2007-12-03T13:42:00.000+05:30

By Manish Chandi

Although a part of the Republic of India, the Nicobar Islands are closer to the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The River Galathea drains into the sea in a large cove called South Bay on the southern tip of Great Nicobar Island. The beach at the river mouth was a significant nesting site for leatherback sea turtles and this was where the Andaman and Nicobar Islands’ Environmental Team (ANET) ran a research project since the year 2000. Since the research camp lay 41 kilometres along the main trunk road that led south out of the shantytown of Campbell Bay, it was called Point 41.

In December 2004, the leatherback nesting season was at its peak and a young wildlife biologist from Orissa, Dr Ambika Tripathy, was studying them. A quiet and shy person, this was his first visit to the Nicobars, a long waited opportunity. His assistant was Saw Agu, a young Karen (a tribe originally from Burma settled in the Andaman Islands by the British in 1925) veteran of several years on the sea turtle project. Besides the four middle-aged amateur ornithologists from Pune who were visiting, the other members of the camp were Sameer and Abdul Aziz, the two guards from the Andaman and Nicobar Forest Department.

Agu (holding the red torch) with forest guards at Galathea beach (pic by Ambika Tripathy)

After dinner on Christmas day, Ambika and Agu left the camp to walk the long stretch of beach, recording data on nesting turtles, returning exhausted just before sunrise. They were deep in slumber when a tremendous shaking jolted them awake. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands lie on a fault line and earthquakes are common. But this was a big one!

Sprinting onto the beach, they found their guests and the forest guards watching the sea receding into an abnormally low tide. Just as quickly the tide rushed into camp, scattering their things on the flooded beach. Meanwhile it continued to quake and it was difficult for any of them to stand upright. The sea ebbed again leaving fish flopping on the shore. Sensing that the worst was yet to come, Agu pointed to the hills and shouted ‘Bhago!’ (Run). Instead of heeding his warning, the four naturalists from Pune began to photograph the scene, while the two guards rushed around collecting their dispersed belongings, including precious certificates of achievement. Only Ambika took Agu seriously but compelled to play the host, he waited for the older men, wasting valuable time.

The tremors continued and the sea ebbed and surged in small bursts. When the waves started to engulf the land they stood on, the group finally decided to move. As they approached the road, the nearest high ground, the sea was surging ashore with greater intensity and they witnessed the forest check-post being washed away.

However, by the time they reached the road it had gone underwater too. There was water as far as the eye could see. The only thing that stood above the water was the bridge that spanned the River Galathea. But when they got to the bridge, it was already under thigh-deep water that was rising rapidly. Running to the hills in the distance was not an option anymore, as they would never make it in time. The only thing they could do was to climb a large pipul (Ficus religiosa) tree nearby. Agu and the guards assisted the naturalists in getting above the reach of the waves, before climbing up to “safety” themselves.

At the 37th kilometer. The road is under the sea.

Sitting nervously on the tree, Agu recalls the sound of the tsunami as it approached. It began with an enormous roar, accompanied by the sound of branches snapping and trees falling. That’s when Agu saw the huge phalanx of dark water, perhaps 15 metres high, effortlessly crashing down giant coastal trees in its path and coming straight at them with the force of a celestial sledgehammer. That was the last time Agu saw his companions.

The tsunami smashed the pipul tree like a matchstick and sucked Agu underwater, knocking his breath out and tangling his legs amongst tree branches. As he gasped for air and struggled to free himself, he snorted and swallowed mouthfuls of the dark, smelly water. When he managed to surface, he found himself bobbing amidst huge uprooted trees. Land was far in the distance. Before he could gain his bearings the next wave pulled him underwater again. The force of the tide whipped away his shorts leaving him totally naked. The waves walloped him against the trunks of huge uprooted trees and other debris and every part of him took a beating. He felt like a rag doll being tossed by a malevolent force which he couldn’t escape. He ached all over and was scratched and scraped everywhere. Each time he went under, he gulped more of the filthy water. When he tried to haul himself up a standing tree, it gave way and fell right on him. His shoulders and chest hurt especially badly and every breath he drew hurt even more. There seemed no end to the fury of the sea.

Agu struggled to stay afloat through the turbulence until he was finally able to climb onto a floating tree. The battering had left him totally drained, but concern for the others was uppermost in his mind. He scoured the watery landscape and shouted for the others; there was no response. The waves and the pain had wrung him of all energy. Seeing the camp underwater, it seemed unlikely anyone had survived that destruction. Eventually the sea abated; it was eerily quiet except for the harsh sound of rough waves crashing on fallen trees, pushing flotsam and Agu towards land. There wasn’t a whimper of life anywhere, not even birds. The bridge across the Galathea had disappeared; only its columns rose above the water. Trees shorn of leaves stood naked against the sky. Agu was disoriented - the coast as he knew it was missing and the rainforest seemed to rise out of the sea - but he realized that the raft of fallen trees he was sitting on had once been part of a lowland tropical forest next to a large mangrove creek, the Galathea River. He pondered his next move. The forest was too far in the distance – he didn’t think his fractured, bruised and aching body could get him there. There were no fishing boats at sea. He was all alone on that long trashed coastline with no sign of any help coming his way. He wondered if any of his friends from Chingenh, the nearest Nicobarese village, would remember to look for him, or if indeed any of them had survived. Helplessness washed over him. He knew he had to get back on land, but how? He told himself that he would wait, rest and recover his strength. After nightfall, it began to rain leaving him cold, tired, hungry and aching, but sleep was not an option. He felt compelled to maintain a vigil for any further developments.

The next day dawned and he was still bobbing in the middle of nowhere surrounded by rafts of logs and debris. The carcass of a turtle floated by and moments later a turtle swam past. These were the first creatures Agu saw in the immediate aftermath. Debris was piled up everywhere. There was no place to hide from the sun’s relentless heat. It made him thirsty and when he could stand it no more, he was driven to drinking the dirty, stinking seawater. He slept fitfully and woke up to the same nightmare.

Dead trees at the waters edge close to where Agu was.

Hours wore on into days. Helicopters and planes occasionally flew overhead but there was no way of alerting them. He had weakened from lack of water and food. Small sips of seawater were all he had. One moonlit night he saw a saltwater crocodile swim close to his pile of logs, and circle it. He looked around for something to fend it off in case it came close but mercifully it swam away. He could see other crocodiles circling the debris of the mangrove forest that had once been their home. Sand flies bit him during the day and mosquitoes made the nights miserable. The crocodiles and the insects were the only signs of life. He had no idea what had happened to the people in the surrounding villages or just how massive the scale of devastation was.

Agu in 1998

Rain brought relief from the heat and he gulped it eagerly, but the cooler temperatures that followed froze him at night. He kept count of the days; a week had already gone by. He lost consciousness frequently from dehydration and exhaustion. On the tenth day he tried swimming to another raft of logs closer to land, but when his aching body protested, he abandoned the effort.

The helicopters stopped flying past and Agu suffered a crisis of hope. Then one day, a water monitor visited him and smelt his feet with its long forked tongue; Agu realized with a start that it was checking if he was carrion. He knew that he would have to go ashore and live, or die there and become lizard food. He was determined to live even if the effort killed him. He had regained his bearings to some degree and remembered that there was a forest trail that led to a village at the 35th kilometer called Shastri Nagar. He picked a small branch to support his badly wounded arm and swam over to the next logjam and rested. The pain was excruciating and every movement was time-consuming. He stumbled on the branches and slipped on the smooth trunks but he kept going. The effort knocked him unconscious frequently and it took him several hours to crawl ashore.

The shore was no longer the beautiful beach he remembered. It was unrecognizably clogged with huge uprooted trees, lianas, broken branches, and slush. Climbing over this debris was going to be difficult, so he decided to make his way through the forest along a hilly slope. He was delighted to find the stream still flowing and drank his fill of fresh water for the first time in thirteen days. When he stepped on an old areca nut he couldn’t resist the temptation to chew on it. There was nothing else around that seemed edible. On seeing a skull, he shivered, but realized it was old and had probably been unearthed by the waves. It was less than seven kilometres to Shastri Nagar but it took him three days of hobbling and crawling to get there.

On the 11th of January, Agu staggered into the village. It had been sixteen days since the tsunami. He couldn’t see a soul around, but household wreckage – tin roofs, mangled furniture, window frames, clothes, and utensils – lay scattered everywhere. He stared, trying to comprehend the devastation; he knew some of the villagers and wondered what had become of them. He put on a pair of green trousers and a white shirt that he found lying on the ground. As he picked his way agonizingly and gingerly through the mess he heard a shout. It was Sriram, a villager, who had returned with a few others to collect some of their belongings. It was a strange relief listening to that familiar voice narrating the terrible tale of the devastation that had been caused in just a few hours on that sunlit but fateful day.

Sriram took Agu to an old couple who had stayed on after the tsunami. During his years working at the research camp, Agu had seen the couple going about the village and recognized them; they however couldn’t identify him – sixteen days of being ravaged by the sun, rain and sea had taken their toll. The old lady fed him his first meal since the tsunami. That was when they heard a helicopter flying low overhead and Sriram ran out to wave it down.

Near the Galathea river mouth, a few months later (March 2005)

By an extraordinary coincidence, a search party from ANET had received permission just that day to conduct a search for the members of their sea turtle research camp. As they flew in the Indian Navy helicopter surveying the damage below, they saw a few people gathered in an opening waving at them. The team requested to be dropped there and the villagers led them to Agu. There was shock and relief when they saw him sitting under the coconut trees of the desolate village. Before being whisked away to a hospital, Agu told the search party that he had not seen Ambika or the others since the tsunami, but he asked them not to give up hope. However, despite many searches over the following months, none of the other members of the ANET turtle camp were ever found.

Agu was treated for his injuries and dehydration at Dhanvantri, the Naval hospital at Port Blair. He had broken both collarbones, fractured a few ribs and bruised his body very badly. After spending a few months recuperating with his family at his home in Webi, North Andaman, Agu returned to work at ANET where he is today.

It is a testament to his strength of will that Agu narrated this story with no sense of drama but as if it were a tale of a long forgotten hero in a distant land. He is a source of courage to all of us.

Agu: post recuperation

Agu and Uncle Paung during a survey, 2006

On that fateful day, the beach at South Bay sank several metres, destroying the mangroves and the beach. The sea turtle camp lay about 125 kilometres northwest of the epicentre of the 9.1 Richter earthquake of 26 December 2004, and about 150 kilometres from totally devastated Aceh in Sumatra. Today there is a slow accretion of sand on the beach and soon ANET researchers will be able to determine if the leatherbacks will come back to nest here.

Ambika Tripathy’s contribution to sea turtle research in the Andamans and Nicobars will go a long way towards their conservation and enable future researchers to evaluate how the tsunami has affected the leatherback nesting grounds in the Nicobars.

The dangers of helping snakes cross the road

2007-11-08T15:09:00.000+05:30

By Rom Whitaker

May, 1967 – Southern Arizona, USA
Back then I was a young punk, just out of the US Army and catching snakes down in the Huachuca Mountains, near the Mexican-Arizona border. I was getting on the average of $25 per rattler from the Staten Island Zoo and other collectors, and this was rattlesnake heaven with no less than seven or eight wonderful species in the area. Well, I was hunting Green Rock Rattlers on a huge rockslide one afternoon and managed to get nailed in the thumb by an average sized snake. I’ll save the story of the dramatic and somewhat comical symptoms that bite resulted in for later. The main thing is, I learnt my lesson that day and this was my credo from then onward:

· Snakebite is no fun; it hurts like hell. You can lose limbs and you can actually die.
· Snakebite is not macho. It’s never the snake’s fault; with care it is avoidable. It does not deserve any sympathy as it is just your own stupid, clumsy fault.
· Handle all snakes with equal caution, care and respect for both the snake and yourself and you won’t get bit.

May, 2006 – Northern Territory, Australia
About 40 years later finds me driving down the highway outside of Darwin, in the Top End of Australia with friends and fellow croc biologists (who are soon to be married!) - Adam Britton and Erin O’Brien. We were on our way to check out a huge saltwater croc skull at the Corrorrborree Tavern when I yelled to Adam to hit the brakes, “Snake!” I hollered. He dropped me at the side and I dashed back to where the thin black snake was flailing as it tried to get across the hot, slippery tarmac. There were cars coming at speed from both sides and my instinct was to get the snake off the road posthaste. There was no conscious thought process happening, my adrenalin was doing all the reacting, and therein lies the danger. There was no stick so I reached down to quickly flip it off the road. It all happened real fast but it was pretty obvious that during that split second the snake managed to snag one of its fangs into the top of my right thumb. Well, now I really had to see this snake and figure out what species it is, fast.

There is an impressive lineup of three dark coloured, lean snakes which could ruin your day up in Northern Territory: the Taipan, Western Brown Snake and Black Whip Snake. If it was either of the first two I was in deep, deep trouble. I used a thin stick to gently pin the very jumpy snake and get a good look at the head. Its open mouth revealed obvious fangs and the slight speckling on the head, along with the glossy sheen and longish tail made me bet it was a Black Whip Snake, a species I knew well from my years in New Guinea.

I let the snake go and sheepishly got into the car and had to admit my misdemeanor. Adam looked amused, “But I thought you were here on contract with a film crew”. “Yup” I said and then lapsed into ‘Stralian “She be right, mate”. Erin didn’t look so amused and asked if I felt any symptoms yet. The bite had already started to tingle and throb and lo and behold the swelling started after a few more minutes.

To make a couple of days story short, the arm did swell, small balloon size and it was an embarrassment since I was supposed to be presenting ‘Supersize Crocs’; but I managed. What I almost didn’t survive were those hearty Aussie handshakes that made me gag in pain every time. In a few days the swelling went down considerably but mysteriously bloated up again weeks later (which we later read about in the snakebite literature).

Probably the main ‘casualty’ of this very avoidable event was Janaki. When I made my evening phone call back to India and vaguely told her I got a nip from a Black Whip Snake she promptly looked it up in our Aussie snake bible by Hal Cogger and read: Demansia atra -- ‘regarded as potentially dangerous to humans’. She agreed with the local codgers’ motto: 'don't handle the effin Australian wildlife'

There was no excuse for that thoughtless bit of ‘snake rescue’. I had ‘gently’ kicked a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake off the road in the face of oncoming 18-wheel truck, with minimum danger to self (from the snake anyway) and used sticks and other implements any number of times. But using my hand was just plain dumb and now I’ve really learnt my lesson.

Below are notes on the bite for those interested in this kind of thing.

NOTES ON A DEMANSIA ATRA BITE

Date: 26/5/06, 5:36 PM, clear skies mild weather about 30 degrees C

Place: Scrub forest typical of area, ca. 50 kilometers out of Darwin, NT, Australia on the highway to the Adelaide River

Snake: Demansia atra, glossy black, light stippling on head, male about 50cm in length

Circumstances: “helping” snake across road with a quick tail grab, snake gave quick jab and connected with one fang on top of the right thumb below knuckle and released immediately.

Symptoms:
5:36 PM Immediate stinging and onset of throbbing toothache-like pain in thumb, spreading rapidly throughout hand within 15-20 minute
5:50 PM swelling spreading to top of hand. Crepe bandage wrapped on hand and arm but removed soon after as swelling continues
6:15 PM swelling continuing across hand to little finger, stinging and itchy tingling sensation where the swelling spreads
6:30 PM swelling spread across whole hand including wrist, same feeling within hand, no other symptoms except for a vague uneasiness
8:30 PM returned to lodge outside Darwin to be close to hospital in case of any untoward symptoms. Swelling now above wrist, same tingling, pulse 100 though my aspect is calm
9:45 PM swelling halfway up forearm to elbow, pulse 110, took Metacin (paracetamol) tablet
11:10 PM swelling to elbow, same tingling, pulse 87, lymph nodes in elbow and armpit tender, slight pain when touched, fingers all stiff and palm swollen thick and tight

27/5/06
6:00 AM very little sleep due to discomfort of placing arm on bed. Fingers and hand stiff and tightly swollen, no throbbing or pain unless hand/arm touched or jarred. Kept hand elevated and unused today, took antihistamine course, Clarinaze, one per day for next 4 days.

28/5/06
9:00 AM swelling reduced by 50%, slight pitting edema, thumb slightly painful, hand and arm tender, lymph nodes still tender for next two days

29/5/06
9:00 AM pitting edema, swelling limited to lower forearm and thumb area. Whole arm sensitive to touch. Palm bluish, especially at hand lines, when immersed in hot or cold water. Actively catching crocs and other activity

30/5/06
9:00 AM edema nearly gone but sensitivity remains. Fingers tight but able to bend. At night frequently awaken with ‘toothache-like’ pain and tingling in arm and hand, a bit like a muscle strain

31/5/06
9:00 AM no swelling except for thumb and wrist, less sensitive, fewer night wakeups, minor aching now and then

2/6/06 (one week post bite)
9:00 AM past two days little swelling, hand and thumb a bit sensitive, pain when bending/flexing. Elbow and shoulder a bit stiff and slightly painful as with a bruise

7/6/06 (twelve days post bite)
9:00 AM top of hand and thumb slightly sensitive to touch. Slight swelling starting yesterday evening now encompassing thumb, wrist and top of hand. Swelling remained for several days and subsided; sensitivity to touch persisted for another week. This recurrent swelling has also been reported in the literature on Demansia bite.

Dwarf caiman constructing nest

2007-11-05T16:51:00.000+05:30

This photograph by Sujan Bernard shows a female dwarf caiman (Paleosuchus palpebrosus) constructing her nest, taken at about 6 p.m. on 29th August, she laid 10 eggs on 31st August, of which 9 were deemed to be viable by candling. She was a poor nest defender, and made two feeble attempts to protect her nest when we collected the eggs. Seven of these are undergoing incubation, and hatching is expected in mid-late November.

Extracts from the Curators Report-July to October 2007

2007-10-22T10:01:00.000+05:30

Research studies on the growth in gharial are continuing with C. Chandrasekhar, Annamalai University, and further collaboration may involve microbiological aspects of crocodile feces.
Involvement with the Madras Veterinary College, Wildlife Science Dept., will involve looking at biochemical/hematology parameters in marsh crocodiles at MCBT, and comparing these with those observed at Amaravathi and Arignar Anna Zoological Park.
A note on the reproductive biology of the little known charismatic Andaman endemic, Gekko verreauxi, is in preparation with R.Whitaker.

Current in press/in prep/recently published articles
i. Gowri Shankar, P. & N. Whitaker. Ecdysis in the king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah). Russian Journal of Herpetology; In Press
ii. Whitaker, N. 2007. Extended parental care in the Siamese crocodile Crocodylus siamensis (Schneider). Russian Journal of Herpetology. Vol. 14, No 3.: 1-4
iii. Whitaker, N & V. Jaganathan. Biology of the Cane Turtle (Geoemyda silvatica). Amphibian and Reptile Conservation; In Press
iv. Sexual size dimorphism, harvest intensity, and local distribution of two snakes from South India. In Prep

Visit to Andaman and Nicobars Environmental Team, 23rd – 27th August 2007

Primary objective to visit ANET was to gauge the facilities and possibilities of tailored research projects for visiting volunteers, in addition to discussing and standardizing ANET saltwater crocodile survey protocols. In addition I met the Chief Wildlife Warden, Shri S.S. Choudhury, to gauge the levels of human-crocodile conflict, as the Union Territory is one of the locations covered in the ongoing UNDP-GEF project entitled “Community Based Mitigation of Human Crocodile Conflict in India". I also met the Officer In Charge of Haddo Zoo, Shri Durai, in connection with a CZA request that MCBT train their Zoo Staff on husbandry and management of water monitors there. It was decided that it would be best if the Zoo Staff visited MCBT early next year, when we hope to have water monitors, perhaps from Nandankannan Zoo. Shri Durai was also willing to give MCBT box turtles and water monitors from Haddo Zoo.

Discussions with Manish Chandi and Saw John included the design of projects be done at MCBT, project work at ANET, and analysis and presentation again at MCBT (once project finished). Projects would be centered in and around ANET, to avoid permit hassles (for time being foreign volunteers cannot be involved in sea turtle/saltwater crocodile surveys). The ANET base map has been digitized by my brother who works at SECCON, and will be used for mapping some of the below projects.

Below is a preliminary list of projects that visiting volunteers could be engaged in:

Agamid, geckos, skinks, using pit-fall traps
Post tsunami changes in mangrove community structure
Mollusk/snail/water snake densities in mangroves
Growth rates of Nepa palms and other endangered/fuel wood flora
Butterfly/moth richness studies
Studies on bird migrations (concentrating on Andaman teal)
Library cataloguing, ordering, scanning, etc
Tree map/ species list of ANET, based on existing contour map (gridded with ground references); will also be useful for all of the above fauna/flora inventories/behavioral studies)

Species Management/Acquisitions

a. It was proposed that a reintroduction program for Python molurus hatched at the Madras Crocodile Bank (12 this year), perhaps along with those hatched at Arignar Anna Zoological Park (for a total of 20-25 juveniles), be implemented. Snakes may be marked and released in areas of suitable forest cover within Tamil Nadu; Mudumalai and some Reserve Forests in the foothills of the Nilgiris areas would seem to be places with suitable habitat for this species, and they have previously been recorded from these areas. A student from a nearby university may take up monitoring of individuals following release to assess growth, survival, breeding, etc. It is now necessary to meet the Chief Wildlife Warden personally to discuss this matter.

b. The dwarf caiman (Paleosuchus palpebrosus) bred for the first time at MCBT, laying a clutch of 10 eggs on 31st August 2007, all of which are viable. Eggs are incubating now and hatching is expected sometime in mid-November. 16 Crocodylus moreletii were also hatched, and are thriving on local fish fingerlings and minced Oreochromis.

Nikhil Whitaker
Curator
Madras Crocodile Bank Trust

FEEDING SNAKES, TOADS AND BATS

2007-09-21T15:36:00.000+05:30

By Rom Whitaker

Back in the ’60s, when I was working at the Miami Serpentarium in Florida (Bill Haast, alias God, was my boss), I met up with a lot of budding zookeepers and also people who just liked to rear and breed weird creatures. Sitting in on some of their discussions, I got to hear some of the oddest tips traded among these animal people.

The late Joe Laszlo, very appropriately tucking into a big bowl of his incomparable chicken paprikash, gave us these words of wisdom on a technique he had used to induce a reluctant Ursini’s viper to feed. Imagine a thick Hungarian accent, punctuated by the occasional swear word (think ‘sonsabeeches’):

“This little viper refused to feed for two months and I was getting worried. She refused white mice so I think, ‘Ok, so you want wild mice.’ Some snakes are very fastidious and suspicious, you know. So I get her a plump field mouse and try at the optimum time – just after she sheds her skin and takes a good shit, as that’s when a snake should be real hungry. She just flicks her tongue, makes a half-hearted strike when the mouse comes too close and that’s it. I notice she drinks now and then and seems to prefer droplets sprinkled on the pebbles in her cage rather than her drinking dish. A lot of snakes, especially from drier areas, must get their drink from dewdrops when there is no rain around.

“Ok, so if the snake is thirsty an idea occurs to me. I remove the water dish, don’t spray water and wait for 5 days. Then I kill a field mouse, soak it completely in water, and put it gently in the cage. Very soon the Ursini’s viper comes over to investigate the mouse, tongues it, starts drinking droplets from the fur, likes the taste and starts swallowing the mouse. After that she always eats after a shed… no problems.”

On another occasion several of us drove out to a suburb of Miami where a friend of ours raised lizards and toads. We remarked what a pain it must be for him to find insects to feed his creatures, since most are active predators and need the stimulus of movement to get into feeding mode. We recalled the many times we’d had to shake a dead rat to fool a snake into grabbing it. Our friend had solved his problem with a touch of genius: opening the side-door of a perfectly landscaped terrarium, he set an old 33 rpm record-changer down next to it. A fat European green toad in the terrarium hopped to the door, and while we watched and wondered, our friend switched on the turntable. The looks on our faces quickly turned to amused amazement as he dropped bits of dog-chow onto the spinning turntable, and the toad grabbed them one by one as they whizzed by him, just as he would an insect! The technique was demonstrated with blue-throated fence lizards as well. I’ve always thought someone should write about it… and better 35 years late than never!

A third strange friend was into bats. He had a particular fascination for vampire bats from Mexico and if he was going out of town or couldn’t get any fresh blood for his pets, he’d simply hang them in the bottom shelf of his refrigerator where they remained torpid. (I’m really not sure if this enforced hibernation is good for bats!) What did impress us was the way he fed his insectivorous bats: around dusk he took out a six-pack of beer (from the same fridge) and while we popped tops and guzzled, he told us to sit back and watch the fun. He took a child’s pop-gun (used for shooting corks) out of his desk drawer and pulled back the spring. Inserting a live mealworm in the front where the cork should go, he shot the squirming worm into the darkening sky. Instantly a bat appeared from nowhere and scooped up the airborne worm. This was fun for all (except, perhaps, the worms) and each of us took a few turns with the ‘bat-gun’.

I’m sure there are lots of innovative ways of feeding wild creatures that have proven difficult to rear in captivity. I remember a pangolin kept at the Children’s Park in Guindy, Madras who had his own keeper to take him around the forest all day, supervising ‘Pangy’ as he dug into termite mounds and (hopefully) ate his fill. But pangolins are nocturnal animals, so was Pangy really feeding or just trying to dig in for the day?

I’ve never seen a zookeeper’s manual that covers these subjects, but there’s certainly scope to gather and disseminate these important tips. And a need for it too.

LIZARDS OF THE EAST COAST ROAD

2007-09-14T10:18:00.000+05:30

Mr. J. Subramanean, Research Scholar, MCBT

My tryst with lizards began only recently when I decided to study them after registering for a PhD programme at the Pondicherry University. Though the general distribution of lizards in India is well known, very few ecological studies have ever been conducted. So when the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust offered me a chance to study lizards, I grabbed it. I teamed up with Arumugam, an Irula tribal, who was to be my field assistant. Arumugam was not only an expert in locating lizards, but also possessed considerable knowledge about snakes. I selected three study sites, each with its own characteristic flora and fauna, and named them ‘salai’, ‘scrubland’ and ‘dune’.

The vegetation of the salai usually consists of palmyra trees with lots of undergrowth. However, the entire belt that I had chosen as my study area had been earmarked for real estate development resulting in the area being cleared and walls being built. The garden lizard (Calotes versicolor) is found here in abundance. It is mistakenly called a ‘bloodsucker’ since the throat of adult males turns blood red during the breeding season. On my morning field trips I would often see them basking, as they need to externally regulate their body temperature like other reptiles. Basking lizards are sluggish, and I have approached them within about three feet to get close-up shots. Until they reach an optimal body temperature, they are vulnerable to predators; I once saw a Eurasian sparrow hawk swoop down and pluck a basking lizard from a palm tree. This has earned the sparrow hawk the name ‘Onaadapaan’ in Tamil, which means ‘ lizard hunter’. Later in the day, as it got hotter, they became more active, foraging for food, defending their territory and displaying courtship behavior, where males (in the breeding season) threaten each other by head bobbing.

Other residents of the salai study area included bronzeback tree snakes (Dendrelaphis tristis), rat snakes (Ptyas mucosus) and saw-scaled vipers (Echis carinatus). Though bronzeback tree snakes also climb palm trees like the garden lizards, I never saw any interaction between the two during my observation period of one year.

The second habitat of my study was the scrubland, which is a treeless area dominated by the dwarf bush (Canthiam coramandelicum). Though this area is free from real estate development, goat and cattle grazing is rapidly destroying the vegetation. As at the other sites, Arumugam and I marked the study grids with ropes for systematic collection of data. Here my main study subject was the fan-throated lizard (Sitana ponticeriana), the dominant lizard species in scrubland.

During the breeding season (June to December), the colour of the Sitana’s dewlap is known to turn a brilliant blue-black but despite a full year’s observation I never saw these lizards displaying or using the throat fan at all. This, I think, could be due to my presence in their territory. By the end of the breeding season the population multiplied up to five times the original number. In June 2006 I observed close to 30 adults in a 250 m x 150 m area. In August, post south-west monsoon, gravid females increased their feeding activity. By December 2006 the adult population had reduced drastically, to about five individuals, possibly due to predation. However, by January 2007 there were at least 150–160 hatchlings that were miniature replicas of their parents. The traditional hunter-gatherers like the Irula believe that saw-scaled vipers, which share the Sitana’s habitat, feed on the young of the Sitana. This is distinctly possible since the viper is a known ambush hunter though I never witnessed such an event.

The third habitat that I studied is the dune, dominated by thorny beach vegetation like Ravana’s moustache (Spinifex littoreus), named after a demon in Indian mythology. Here the species I studied was the cryptic and beautiful sand skink (Mabuya bibronii), a little studied class of lizards. At the start of my study in February 2006, there was relatively little disturbance and my study population was quite high, about 30–35 individuals. However, by October 2006 I found that the population was reduced to 10–15 individuals. This was a direct result of the systematic clearing and burning of the original beach vegetation to plant casuarina (Casuarina equisetifolia) saplings as a barrier against tsunamis!! Not only are large and charismatic species like sea turtles affected by these detrimental practices, but my study shows that other small and little studied creatures like the skink are also adversely affected.

Each of my study habitats is in immediate danger of being destroyed forever by some form of human activity - salai, being walled and cleared for real estate development; scrubland, being overgrazed; and dune, turned into a casuarina monoculture. It makes my heart heavy to know that students after me – even a mere three years down the road - will not have the opportunity that I had to study these lizard habitats around the Croc Bank.

Turtle soup: Of turtles, sea grass and conflict on an island in the Lakshadweep

2007-09-05T12:54:00.000+05:30

Photo: Rohan Arthur

by Rohan Arthur, Nature Conservation Foundation

This is not a story about climate change. Yet, by the time I began looking at the coral reefs of the Lakshadweep they were in the throes of one of the worst climate change related events in recorded history. Within a few months of the 1998 El Niño event, ocean temperatures had risen more than three degrees above normal in the Arabian Sea, and I was diving in coral graveyards, which were, not too long ago, vibrant playgrounds of some surreal imagination. Like it or not, climate change was something I had to deal with if I was interested in understanding the coral reefs of the Lakshadweep. Since then I have been tracking the seemingly arbitrary fates meted out to reefs in the Lakshadweep; some sites moving further towards deterioration, others recovering at a galloping pace. With each approaching summer, I check the sea surface temperature charts with bated breath, hoping that those dreaded patches of red do not develop around the Lakshadweep coral reefs once again.

This not a story about Lakshadweep’s coral reefs. Yet, from all I had learnt from the disaster of 1998 I realized, like many others around the world that we needed to adopt a more intelligent and holistic approach to managing coral reefs and the people dependent on them. Climate change is a part of the dubious human legacy we have bequeathed the ecosystems of the world and in the face of such large unpredictable events, the best we can hope for is that our coral reefs have the necessary resilience to recover from them. The Lakshadweep islands are islands of fishermen. For as long as they can remember, they have eaten fish. At first the fish caught were almost exclusively from the reefs and lagoons that surrounded their islands. More recently, they have taken to catching tuna from deeper waters, but fish from the reef and lagoon still feeds them, particularly during the rough monsoon months. Healthy reefs and healthy lagoons are as important to maintain a healthy fishery, as they are to develop resilience. Fisheries reserves are one of the few better ways to promote fisheries while at the same time providing some degree of protection to coral reefs. These reserves are small areas of reef and lagoon where fishermen agree not to fish. They have multiple benefits, and while they allow reefs and fish to recover from overharvesting, they also act as a brood stock from where fish populations can spill over to supply the demands of the local fishery.

This is not a story about fisheries reserves. But if we could convince local fishermen to establish and maintain a fisheries “no take” area, even on an experimental basis on one of the islands of the Lakshadweep, it could have far reaching consequences for the management of reef and lagoon fisheries. So that’s what we attempted to do. We organised meetings with local groups in the island of Agatti, where I made presentations about the benefits of having such a fisheries reserve. I showed them examples of where it had been successful. By and large they appeared convinced, even enthusiastic. And then we threw the floor open to discussions.

Photo: M.D. Madhusudan

That’s when it happened. Meeting after meeting that started out to be a discussion about climate change, coral reefs and fisheries reserves, inevitably turned into a heated discussion about fishing, turtles and seagrass. Yes, said the fishermen, they had noticed that the waters occasionally get hotter than usual. Yes, they did notice the reef turning white and dying – who wouldn’t? And yes, a fisheries reserve sounded like a great idea to boost their declining catches. But if we really wanted to know what was causing their catches to decline, it was the turtles. Green sea turtles in particular. Over the last ten years or so green turtle numbers had increased to such a degree in the lagoon of Agatti that they were, frankly, pests. Worse, they were eating up all the seagrass in the lagoon. The once lush meadows of seagrass were now sparse and raggedly. And the fish that came in from the coral reef at high tide were no longer attracted to the lagoon in great numbers. A single beach seining operation 15 years ago would be enough to get fish for 10 families. Today in contrast, they needed to cast their nets 10 times to get just about enough to feed a single family. If we truly wanted a solution to the problem of declining fish catch, the answer was simple – allow them to kill turtles.

If the fishermen were merely reflecting an impression based on shallow logic or an inadequate understanding of how their systems worked, I would perhaps have been able to discount it quite easily. What they were presenting, however, was a series of rather refined ecological hypotheses, no matter how tenuous they may sound to the sceptical scientist. In addition, this was linked to an increasing resentment of green turtles that could, if ignored develop into a serious anti-conservation position by local communities. At the very least, it needed a little looking into.

Let’s break it down a bit. The fishermen’s complaint is actually a multifaceted problem that has different answers when viewed through different lenses. First, we need to figure out if turtles really are at the numbers fishermen say they are. Second, we will have to show that grazing by turtles on sea grass can actually cause changes in sea grass meadows, and that the sea grass is finding it difficult to cope with these changes. Lastly, we will have to show that these changes in sea grass meadows can significantly alter the way coral reef fish use the sea grass.

Over the last year a team of us from different institutions have been conducting a series of small studies to try and answer these questions in Agatti. Our initial estimates of turtle numbers in the lagoon showed that they were, indeed, remarkably high and in some locations we could barely count them as we moved slowly over the lagoon in our little sampling boat. What’s more, they were concentrated in their highest densities where sea grass was most extensive. From interviewing a large sample of fishermen about their fishing practices, we found that these areas of high turtle densities were also areas where fishermen liked to fish the most.

Photo: Rohan Arthur

We then began to investigate the potential impact these turtles could be having on the sea grass meadows of Agatti. Even at first sight it was possible to see that there were differences between meadows with different densities of green turtles. Even at sites with relatively low densities of turtles, a very large proportion of seagrass had the telltale signs of turtle munching. At high-density turtle sites, however, almost every shoot of sea grass we could find had at least one leaf bitten through. The sea grass leaves themselves appeared to be adapting to this constant grazing. At the highest turtle density sites sea grass leaves were thinner and shorter, and there were fewer leaves produced per shoot in comparison to sites where grazing was not as high. And when we looked at the entire meadow the density of sea grass was considerably lower in areas with lots of turtles. So it was a bit of a surprise to us when we looked in detail at the density structure of the sea grass. What this seemed to suggest was that despite the various impacts of grazing on the meadow, the sea grass appeared to be able to cope rather well. In fact, the meadows that had highest turtle numbers were actually growing quite rapidly in comparison to other sites. It was true that the plants had to invest almost everything they had to sustain this growth, but at least from these initial studies they certainly had it in them to do just that. In fact, Cymodocea rotundata, the species of sea grass dominant in Agatti, appeared to be remarkably adaptable to herbivory. We would even hazard a guess that green turtle grazing may have created conditions ideal for this species as opposed to others that were not quite as tolerant to sustained grazing pressure.

We have still to understand how these changes in sea grass can affect fish usage of the meadow, if indeed fish communities are affected at all. Over the coming seasons we will be designing experiments to test just this. However, if we left it there, we would be doing only half our job, and as ecologists, we may not have a full understanding of the problem.

For instance, if the problem is declining fish catches, this could have a completely different cause: overfishing. The Lakshadweep islands, while they are the idyllic palm-and-white-sand picture postcards you imagine them to be, also has among the highest densities of human populations anywhere in rural India – 2,000+ people occupy every square kilometre. At least one or two members of almost every family in Agatti fish occasionally in the lagoon, and with this density of fishermen fishing the same stretch of sea grass, it is quite easy for the lagoon to be over-harvested.

If, however, the problem is the decline of sea grass in the Agatti lagoon the cause could be something else again: pollution. With the growing population in Agatti, household waste has grown as well and without wastewater treatment facilities, much of this finds its way to the lagoon, bringing along with it plenty of nutrients that could potentially drive the sea grass to decline.

And again, the problem could lie in a completely different direction. When we interviewed fishermen about their specific issues with turtles, another facet of the conflict came to light. Because turtles appear to prefer the area that fishermen like to fish in, turtles often get in the way of fishing nets, not merely scaring away fish, but very often breaking through the nylon and ripping the net to shreds. Each net lost this way costs a fisherman around Rs. 2,500. Perhaps the root of the conflict lies in these purely economic considerations.

How are we to put all of this together? Well, what we have come to realise through our ongoing work in the Lakshadweep is that Agatti’s particular brand of turtle soup has many more ingredients than we first envisioned. All we are trying to do right now is understand each ingredient in itself, before we try and work out the specifics of the recipe. Even when we do this, we will have only done the easy bits, because the really hard part is learning how to unmake Agatti’s turtle soup. But that, I suppose, is another story.

Aruwana attack !

2007-08-09T15:27:00.000+05:30

This is a couple of photo excerpts from a video I shot at our Hardella thurjii aquarium at the Croc Bank, where a male and female reside along with a Aruwana fish from South America. At about 930 am on the 17th of July, I was hoping to get some pictures of courtship in the Hardella, when the male went up and brushed against the Aruwana. Taking offence to this, the fish turned around, gave chase, and gave the poor male a bite on the backside!

VISIT BY A COLLEAGUE FROM MYANMAR

2007-07-22T12:21:00.000+05:30

Following a visit to the Chambal River and turtle rearing centers there, MCBT turtle field biologist Shailender Singh, and Win Ko Ko of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Myanmar were at the Croc Bank in May, looking at our turtle husbandry program. During his stay here, Win was introduced to a half dozen endangered Indian river turtles, which were measured and weighed, including Kachuga dhongoka (see picture below), Kachuga kachuga, Pangshura tectum, Batagur baska, (see picture above), Aspideretes gangeticus, and Hardella thurji. We were able to show him newly hatched K. kachuga too (this year they hatched undetected and had to be caught from the large turtle breeding pond with a scoop net). On his last day he proved to be an expert gharial catcher too. Win Ko Ko is based in Myanmar, and is working on the critically endangered river turtle Kachuga trivittata.

Herp pencil drawings (by Rebecca Davenport)

2007-07-22T11:47:00.000+05:30

Here are two fantastic pencil drawings of a water monitor (Varanus salvator) and three striped roof turtle male (Kachuga dhongoka) by MCBT volunteer Rebecca Davenport. Rebecca's artistic talents were also put to use on new signboards for crocs, and for the puppet theatre's backdrop.

TWO REPTILE NESTS IN THE SAME NIGHT

2007-07-22T11:14:00.000+05:30

I woke up on the 22nd July, Sunday morning, groggy from not being able to sleep well after the lightning storm and rain splashing on me, in addition to wondering what happened to my dog in the deluge (we discovered her on the canteen table where she runs to when things get wet). Things quickly perked up from here, with a call from Pindey, the reptile keeper who looks after the top-half of croc bank on his morning maintenance rounds, with news of a Yacare caiman (Caiman yacare) laying eggs. Next, Sampath, our Irula snake keeper, came down to say the rock python (Python molurus) had laid eggs last night too! I went up, grabbing my camera and thermometer on the way, and with Payal and Laurel went up to the Yacare caiman enclosure. I’d been waiting for this animal to lay her eggs for a while now, nest construction had started on the 7th of this month (a total of 15 days nest construction!) The mother was on her new nest (she'd built an older, much larger one; who knows why she opted for this second nest which was much smaller and less protected), and interestingly very vocal while we were trying to collect the eggs, emitting low groans more akin to a large crocodile in distress than a female protecting her nest. Unfortunately, all 15 eggs were infertile, understandable considering the male’s much smaller size. Better luck next time ! The python eggs were invisible within the mother's coils, and she was “shivering” to raise clutch temperature. We plan to leave the eggs with the mother as long as no problems occur with fungus, mold, etc, and once the eggs are hatched the babies will become an integral part of our education program.

Mugger breeding enclosure No. 8

2007-07-20T16:55:00.000+05:30

Photographs by Rom Whitaker

Circa1976

2007

The mound - then and now!

2007-07-20T16:51:00.000+05:30

Photographs by Rom Whitaker

Circa 1978

2007

Gharial enclosure at the Croc Bank - then and now

2007-07-20T16:46:00.000+05:30

Photographs by Rom Whitaker

Circa 1978.

2007

The Cobra and the Hare

2007-07-08T08:47:00.000+05:30

By Sharmila Rajasegaran

It was a rather unusually hot day for a place like Agumbe, or so I thought. But apparently the month of January is hot. Agumbe receives an annual rainfall of 8,000 mm and is popularly known as the Cherapunji of the south. This beautiful patch of rainforest is home to the largest venomous snake, the king cobra. It also hosts a range of flora and fauna, several species of which are endemic to this region. The Agumbe Rainforest Research Station (ARRS), set up by Rom two years ago, has become a favourite getaway spot for me. The research station nestled amidst the dense forest gives a battered city dweller all the respite one needs.

I was sitting out on the concrete bench in the verandah of the research station gazing at the dense forest cover, listening to the shrill baby like cries of the Malabar hornbill. Suddenly Gowri Shankar (Gowri), the resident herpetologist at ARRS exclaimed, “Did you hear that!” But I was lost in the cries from the treetops and missed the action happening right in front of me. He had heard a quick rustle near a bush to our right followed by a painful sonorous screech. Gowri said, “It could be a snake attacking some small animal”. I remembered the discussion that morning when Gowri explained that some snakes are ambush hunters and these cold blooded animals have elastic jaws, which enable them to stretch the upper and lower jaws to swallow prey almost three times their size. He had also mentioned that small mammals, birds and sometimes, other snakes form the diet of most snakes. With those words still fresh in my mind I walked slowly with him to the scene.

After months of relentless rains followed by sunny hot days the earth was now sucking the moisture back into its folds. The land was dry and the fallen leaves of the lemon tree assumed the color of the earth. It was going to be tough to find something there, but we tried our luck anyway. Just then Gowri spotted a spectacled cobra. It was a young snake probably around three feet in length, golden brown in color, having jet black eyes with its spectacle mark appearing shriveled as its hood wasn’t spread. I understood that it was this part that gave the cobra a mystic look; however, its use was obviously more defined. Gowri explained that the cobra displays its hood to give an impression that it is larger than its contender, be it prey or attacker so that it could appear dominant to them.

The cobra had gone into a hole and its head and tail were sticking out from the opening. Since it was on a slight rise it was aware of what was happening around it. I reached the place very slowly and Gowri asked me to look for any dead animal nearby for he was certain that the snake had made a kill.

Just then I noticed a furry bundle lying motionless right next to the tree. It was a juvenile black-naped hare. It was the size of my palm, brown in color with a black patch on its nape, characteristic of its name. Its colour merged perfectly with the surroundings and I felt that the snake had passed its test for spotting such a perfectly camouflaged prey. Gowri reminded me that the cobra uses its sense of smell rather than sight to track its prey and it had indeed done a wonderful job. The hare’s body was still, warm and its eyes half closed. It was not even five minutes since we had heard the cry and the venom had taken effect almost instantly.

The owner of the kill waited impatiently for us to leave the scene. We respected that and retreated. We waited in the verandah, our ears alert to any sounds of the snake moving towards its prey. We heard the same rustle but it was much slower and we gave it a good ten minutes before moving towards it to check on what was happening. The snake's mouth was stretched half way up its prey and all we could see were the hind legs of the hare. The snake was trying to swallow by working its jaws upwards. Gowri explained that snakes usually swallowed their prey whole and head first with the legs of the prey folded back conveniently. He also informed me that the venom basically comprises proteins and enzymes that help in digestion.

The cobra swallowed the hare in less than five minutes. Once done it kept pushing the food down its long body until it reached the stomach. The cobra left the place almost immediately, moving much more quickly than what we expected.

I had always been awed by these cold blooded animals but learning about them and seeing them in action was a wonderful experience that I will remember for the rest of my life. This also meant that my returning to ARRS research station was going to happen very soon!

A case of snake bite—possibly by the Himalayan White-lipped Pit Viper Cryptelytrops septentrionalis

2007-07-04T16:57:00.000+05:30

By Tarun Chandna

Location: Mori on the banks of the River Tons in Uttarakhand.

I was bitten on the 30th of April 2007 around 11 pm. I had already gone to sleep, when I was woken up by the rain. It had been raining for a couple of days now. I picked up my rucksack, which was near the entrance of the tent, with both hands and brought it in. The moment I removed my hand I felt a sharp, though not too painful, prick on my right forearm. At first I thought it may be a scorpion, but on looking closely I could see a coiled shape on top of my rucksack.

I immediately woke up my friends, Vik and Anvesh, who were in another tent, and they in turn alerted the others. The snake was killed (as none of us knew how to handle snakes) so that we could identify it. The bite was cleaned thoroughly with Dettol and a tourniquet was tied around my forearm, above the bite. Initially we thought it was the harmless grass/vine snake (little knowledge can be dangerous) but sat up till nearly 12:30 am waiting for further symptoms. Other than the pain in my arm, which though was not unbearable was still painful, there seemed to be no other effects. We all then went to sleep thinking that it was probably just a non-venomous snake.

Between 1-1:30 am the pain intensified and my arm began to harden and swell up. I had not been able to sleep and was thinking of all I knew about snakes. Thanks to the two years that I had spent with Gerry Martin (an expert on snakes) I recalled that the tourniquet was not the right thing to do. The pain where the tourniquet was tied was also very intense so I decided to undo it. But the moment it was removed I felt very sick, breaking out into a cold sweat and was overcome by nausea for a minute or two, after which I felt better.

At 2:30 am, I still wasn’t able to sleep because of the pain and decided to take Brufen, a painkiller. Finally, I fell asleep at about 5:30 am, waking up two hours later at about 7:30 am. By this time my arm was quite swollen. But other than the pain and the swelling I didn't feel any different. I had also been drinking lots of water throughout the night.

We began to doubt our initial assumption that the snake was non-venomous because of my swollen arm and the triangular-shaped head of the snake. A talk with Gerry confirmed our suspicions. He thought that it was a pit viper and told me to get to a hospital urgently. He also told me to look out for signs of abdominal pain, nausea or lower back pain, but none of these symptoms manifested. When we reached The Doon hospital I was examined by the doctor on duty and admitted for observation at about 4 pm.

I was administered two bottles of saline with some antibiotics but no antivenom serum (ASV). However, no doctor came to look at me till 10 am the next morning but by then we had decided to go to the military hospital. Oedema was setting into my upper arm and the arm was badly swollen from the fingertips to the shoulder.

At the army hospital where I was admitted a number of blood tests were carried out. They also did an ECG. While the results of most tests were normal, the Clotting Time (CT) and Bleeding Time (BT) were quite badly deranged. In fact, the first sample they took did not clot even after 24 hours.

At 7 pm that evening a senior doctor who apparently had experience with snakebite cases came to see me and suggested that they start me on ASV. I asked him if it was advisable since nearly 42 hrs had passed since the bite. His confident demeanour reassured me. They took me into the ICU and gave me a small test dose of the polyvalent ASV. Since I did not react adversely to it they administered a steroid injection and a phenragan injection before giving me three ASV vials diluted in about 500 ml of saline.

After each dose of ASV they performed the CT/BT tests. The ASV shots were progressively increased from three to five and finally ten in the next three days. The routine was to give me the ASV – check the CT/BT - wait for six hours and then give me another ASV again - then again check CT/BT. In the three days the swelling reduced but any movement was extremely difficult and painful. In all they gave me a total of 31 shots of ASV until my CT time came under control. Then I was discharged from the hospital.

What I gathered from the doctors was this:
1. As long as my CT was deranged their assessment was that the venom in my body was not neutralised and my kidneys were in danger of being affected. The non-clotting of blood also concerned them.
2. They said that the body does not start fighting the venom immediately on being bitten. What it does after the first infusion of venom is start making the antibodies to neutralise the venom, but it stores these antibodies instead of deploying them. Only a shot of ASV triggers their deployment.
3. They were scared of my arm getting gangrenous if the swelling did not reduce.

For the first week after the bite I could not move my arm at all. Some degree of movement returned over the following seven days but my elbow felt like it was locked. Nearly a month after the bite I regained movement of the arm but found it difficult to do anything strenuous. The muscle in my forearm is still 'tight' and weak. But everyday it feels stronger. It may take me another month and some physiotherapy to get back the normal strength in my arm.

Ed’s note: Rom and I visited the area a few weeks after the bite and found two specimens (killed by the locals) of what we think is Cryptelytrops septentrionalis. One of them was found about 500 m upstream of the camp where Tarun was bitten.

A Midnight Rescue

2007-06-28T08:30:00.000+05:30

By Ben Canning, Croc Bank Volunteer Programme

Several nights ago we rescued a recently introduced female crocodile from the jaws of another female at the Croc Bank.

The reactions of crocodiles to being kept in close-quarters with other crocodiles vary greatly. Some of the enclosures in Croc Bank contain hundreds of Muggers, who get on well for the most part; whereas Jaws, the huge Salty, has to have an enclosure all to himself.

The normal defensive behaviour of a crocodile being attacked is to back off into a corner, and keep out of the attacker’s way. Generally they will then either calm down and get used to each other, or the bullied croc has to be removed to another enclosure to ensure its safety. With their powerful jaws and big teeth crocodiles can seriously injure one another.

A day earlier, a female Morelet’s Crocodile had been introduced into her new enclosure as part of a breeding programme. As Morelet’s Crocodiles are endangered, every egg is important. However the resident female, did not take kindly to her sudden arrival, and turned aggressive. This is quite usual when crocs are newly introduced, and we decided to give them a day or so to see if they would get along with each other.

Come evening we could hear the sounds of a fight from the enclosure. By torchlight we could see the two females facing off. The newly introduced female, being smaller than the established female, was coming off far worse, so we decided to remove her from the enclosure before she was seriously injured. Normally we’d expect the smaller female to try to hide in a corner, but she was trying to hold her ground against the larger one, and was getting badly bitten.

Moving a crocodile is not easy at the best of times (in daylight and with calm animals). The enterprise becomes much harder and more dangerous in the dark. Besides the two agitated females we had to deal with an aggressive male too. When we separated the two females they slipped into the pond, so the smaller female had to be lassoed. In the meantime the male tried lunging at us. He had to be distracted and fended off with a stick, but he kept trying to get within striking distance. The lassoed female was then hauled out of the water and a sack was thrown over her head to lessen trauma. Then two of us pinned her to the ground and immobilized her by taping her mouth shut with elastic bands, and carried her out.

The injured female was given an empty enclosure to recover. Luckily crocodiles are generally very hardy, do not get infected easily, and shrug off injuries much better than mammals.

Ed’s Note: Dr. Priya Govind, the vet, treated the croc’s torn eyelid. The eye looked bad and there was concern that she might have lost sight. But Iris (so named by Priya) is every bit as resilient as crocs are thought to be. Despite the swollen eye, she catches live fish in her pond and we are hopeful that she’ll recover completely. Today, she is a calm, normal and healthy animal.

The Disappearing Act

2007-06-25T19:18:00.000+05:30

By Divya Karnad

The dry deciduous forests of Uttara Kannada were alive with morning light. The sunbeams streaming through the trees lit up the path before us. Amongst the fallen leaves, spiders scampered and skinks slithered away from our footfalls. Above our heads sang the rosefinches while Tickell’s blue flycatchers flitted about at eye-level. The falling teak leaves disguised the movements of still more forest creatures. As we walked down to the River Nagzari, we had a feeling that we were being watched. Yet all around us, as far as we could see, all creatures were busy, minding their daily regime of gathering a good breakfast.

All of a sudden the bark of the tree beside us seemed to come alive. We looked up and saw something move but we could not make out anything clearly. With our binoculars trained on the bark, we spread out trying to determine what it was that was spying on us. And yet, there was nothing to be found. Then from the corner of my eye, I made out a shape whizzing past.Was it just a falling leaf?

The Western Ghats flying lizard (Draco dussumieri) is found in these forests. But we were yet to come across one. However, this was our lucky day, as following my hunch and tracking the movements of that “falling leaf”, we finally caught a pair of Dracos in action. The lizards, a male and a female, were indistinguishable from the bark except when they moved. Both sported gular flaps (neck flaps) that were fluorescent green in colour. The female’s flap was much shorter and more curved than the male’s. We, of course, surmised that a male needed a nice, long, elaborate gular flap to attract females. But why a female would need one, despite it being shorter and less conspicuous was somewhat of a mystery. We kept watching the couple and soon realized that both of them flashed their gular flaps at irregular intervals for differing lengths of time. They seemed to be signaling to each other and yet both were on separate trees and neither made a move towards the other. As they moved higher and higher up the trees we had to crane our necks to keep them in sight. Finally, we resorted to lying down among the leaf litter in order not to lose sight of them or break our necks in the process.

A second suitor soon arrived and joined the couple. However, the first male clearly felt that three was a crowd and he began an elaborate display of gular flashes and extended his gliding appendages called patagia. Despite its name, the flying lizard does not actually fly. Instead the flap of skin extending from the forelimbs to the hindlimbs function like a parachute catching the breeze as the animal glided from tree to tree. Unlike the drab female, the male’s orange tinged patagia with green borders made his display stunning. He also flashed his fluorescent gular flap at the second suitor but the other male did not seem to be intimidated. In fact, he edged closer and closer to the female who by this time was quite still and watching the proceedings. The first male then extended his limbs and pushed his body away from the bark, so that he seemed to be hanging on by the tips of his toes, or his claws to be more specific. Consequently, his brilliant orange and green patagium was fully extended and so was his fluorescent green gular flap. All in all he was quite a spectacle, and could have proved a fantastic catch for a hungry hornbill or crested serpent eagle had it chanced upon the sight. Yet for us, it was fascinating as he hung for a whole two minutes, before he decided that it was time for more extreme measures. He then climbed up to the top of his tree and after a moment’s pause, as if readying himself for battle, leapt off the tree. With open arms, he soared down, orange patagia buffeted by the breeze. Within minutes he was on the tree with the second male, and began chasing him away from the female. Round and round the tree they went, the first trying to get hold of the second’s tail. They spiraled upwards until the victor finally succeeded in chasing the second male away.. We tried to follow the defeated male, but he glided away from the scene.

The victor then performed the same extended display for the female, where he held his body away from the bark with patagia and gular flap extended. This time the female responded by climbing up her tree and then gliding on to his. He then tried to get close to her but she kept him at a distance. Their short bouts of movement were followed by periods of complete inactivity.Suddenly, as the female sat motionless, the male reached her in one rapid movement and smelt the base of her tail. In response to this she turned to face him. Then he moved away, further up the tree, until finally we lost sight of him. It was afternoon by this time and the pace of life was slowing down as the temperature soared. The female remained motionless, except for the occasional flashing of the gular flap, which was almost always followed by a side-ways flick of her head towards the bark as if she were picking of insects. Could it be that she was startling her prey by flashing the brilliantly coloured flap? We strained our eyes, but it seemed that our binocs were not powerful enough to pick up such detail. We watched her sleep as we ate our lunch and decided to take the risk and move on along the path to see if we could spot anymore of her fellow species. Now that we knew what to look for things should not be too difficult….. or so we thought!!

There seemed to be no movement anywhere. Not a leaf stirred in the oppressive heat, and even the birds seemed to be conserving their energy by staying in the shade. We finally beat a retreat to the tree with the female flying lizard. To our surprise she had not moved an inch, but had changed colour to match the shadow she was now shrouded in. It seemed that nothing could disturb her afternoon nap. It was clear that she was not about to move anytime soon. So we decided to bid her farewell and head back along the path. In the shimmering heat ahead we saw a shape glide down from the treetops, across the path and land on the bark of a tree just ahead of us. With pounding excitement we once again craned our necks to catch a glimpse, but in vain. The ghost of the forests had disappeared ; the familiar feeling of unseen eyes followed us down the path.

We were elated that the flying lizards had deigned to spend sometime in our company. We aborted our walk down to the Nagzari but we had learnt so much more. In the fading light, the falling leaves made our hearts beat faster in anticipation of a flash of green and orange. At last night fell and brought with it a calm; all the world was asleep and another day would soon dawn on the forests of Karnataka.

Blue Fan-Throated Lizard aka Sitana ponticeriana

2007-06-03T20:40:00.000+05:30

This male in breeding colors was photographed outside Pune, Maharashtra, India. The throat fan is not displayed, unless the male is trying to court a female.

WHY DOES INDIA HAVE SO MANY SNAKEBITES?

2007-05-20T11:32:00.000+05:30

This is a complicated subject, conjecturish replies which just generate more questions. But let’s make a stab at it and perhaps it will stimulate some serious research or at least dialogue on the subject.

First we need to establish a few baselines, one of which is the theory of the Big Four medically important snakes of India. There is no argument with the fact that serious and even fatal bites are occasionally (conjecture, very limited data available) reported from other Indian venomous snakes (banded kraits, sea snakes, king cobras, pit vipers, possibly even coral snakes), but all the major literature on the subject reports little doubt that the cobra (four species), krait (several species), Russell’s viper and saw-scaled viper (possibly two or more species) are the Indian snakes that cause the greatest number of serious and fatal bites.

There is too little reliable data to tell us which of the four cause the greatest number of bites (or fatalities, to answer that favourite quiz question: ‘which is the most dangerous snake in the world’), but it is abundantly clear that it is highly region-specific (for example in places like Jaisalmer in Rajasthan and Ratnagiri in Maharashtra, over 90% of venomous bites are from saw-scaled vipers). This in itself would be a fascinating study, one which herpetologists and medicos could get together on. Finding out prevalence of species and their bites have important implications in teaching people how to avoid bites and in instilling confidence in doctors who treat the bites.

High numbers of venomous snakebites, most among rural farmers and labourers seem to indicate several things:

1. Venomous snakes are present in high densities in agricultural areas – this seems to be true though no one has even done a basic snake population or breeding biology study in India (or compared field populations of snakes to forest numbers). Perhaps the best, though anecdotal indication of this premise being true, are statistics from the days of snakeskin harvests when tanneries in Chennai were processing several million snake skins per year, a large percentage of them cobras and Russell’s vipers. Factors like the habit of cobras and kraits to protect their eggs during incubation could account for high hatching rates, who knows? And who knows what the survival rate of these babies is? Dispersal, home range, growth rates: all big ???

2. Prey species occur in high densities – there is no doubt that this is true, rodents are so incredibly abundant in Indian rice paddies and other agriculture that huge crop losses are commonly reported. Luckily there is plenty of data on rodent population densities and breeding biology from the many studies done by rodent researchers in India. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if some keen young (or old) herpetologist was to take that rodent data and marry it to a snake study. The very strong association of the spectacled cobra with the lesser bandicoot (Bandicota bengalensis) in South Indian rice fields is a potent topic for a PhD or postdoc study. Taking off from George Schaller’s classic ‘The Deer and the Tiger’, how about ‘The Bandicoot and the Cobra’? Any takers?

The prey issue is complex and fascinating: let’s accept as axiomatic that the huge numbers of rodents we encourage wherever we live or farm, create unusually high densities of snakes. We know that cobras are common in rice fields (since we provide rice, water and bunds for lesser bandicoots to tunnel and live in, cobras naturally move in) and that they do cause quite a high percentage of bites in some areas. So is rice the common denominator? Maybe one would have to travel across the rice belt of Asia, all the way to the Philippines to try to figure this one out.

Rice (and other grain crops) certainly seems to be a major reason for high rodent and snake densities. A few quick transect studies in adjacent forests would probably demonstrate just how scarce rodents are there, in comparison to our fields. In a day’s walk with a few Irula snake hunters it’s not unusual to see a dozen rat snakes amongst the paddy; this is a large, conspicuous, diurnal snake and much more likely to be encountered than any of the Big Four.

But what about the other ‘medically important’ snakes? Well the common krait is also a rodent eater (besides the snakes and skinks it regularly feeds on), but specializes (so the Irulas tell us) in field mice (Mus boodoga), just the right size for a thin snake like the krait. And sure enough, kraits like to live in field mice burrows, a nice tight fit. Kraits are not in the paddy field bunds where the cobras live, they prefer larger embankments and especially the old piles of well tailings that dot our countryside. These piles of rocks, soil and debris are quickly colonized by bushes and trees and are ideal habitats for mice and snakes.

Russell’s vipers like cactus, agave, pandanus and other thick, nasty cover. They are not burrow dwellers, though they will get into old termite mounds and larger rodent tunnels at the hottest time of year. Interestingly, these rodent and bird eaters apparently have a special favourite (according to the Irulas and a small study we did some years ago, analyzing snake scats), the Indian gerbil (Tatera indica). Gerbils live in association with rice fields and other crops, not in the bunds but they make their distinctive burrows on higher ground bordering the fields such as the banks of earthern dams. Three of the Big Four thus appear to have strong associations with three different rodents.

The saw-scaled viper is the odd one out, not seeming to benefit from agriculture except perhaps for the spinoff of field mice that probably eat a lot of rice. ‘Sawskies’ as we affectionately call them, like open country and the amount of conversion of good forest land to wasteland that we do has obviously opened up plenty more habitat for these little fellows. They feed on field mice, lizards, scorpions and probably a host of other arthropods like centipedes and spiders. So sawskies aren’t one of our ‘rice field snakes’ though we can blame ourselves for making them at home in our new wastelands.

3. Rural people rarely use footwear (most bites are on feet and legs) – this is certainly true, shoes are expensive and impractical for wading around in the mud of a paddy field. Chappals could be called ‘footwear’ but obviously don’t offer any protection from snakebite. Farmers typically go out to fields early in the morning and come back in the evening, just the time when these venomous snakes might be out wandering around. Rural people also rarely have bathrooms and generally use the bushes, both day and night. No wonder there are so many human/snake encounters. There are some dramatic guesstimates out there that tell us there are up to a million bites per year and of these anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 (depending on the guessing authority) prove fatal.

4. Rural people rarely use lights at night while walking (most bites are at night) – batteries are expensive for people like subsistence farmers and labourers, so even if they have a torch (flashlight) they are not likely to have the batteries for it or will just use it sparingly. Statistics about when most snakebites occur are probably fairly reliable and the common wisdom is that 75% or more of the bites happen at night where such studies have been done. This is of course species specific and will vary from place to place and even seasonally. All of the Big Four are at least partly nocturnal (the krait strictly so), and especially around human habitation snakes seem to adapt to the security of darkness, putting humans at particular risk. A series of interviews with snakebite patients in Kerala (in an area where Russell’s vipers cause almost all the serious bites) revealed that virtually all were bitten at night when they were walking near their homes or on a main road, without a light.

The long and the short of it is, we create ideal snake habitats, provide them with abundant prey and produce 100s of millions more baby humans each year who will grow up to tromp around these snake habitats with no shoes, knowledge of avoidance and no lights at night. No wonder we have so many snakebites!

Ed’s Two Bits: These are all common factors through tropical Asia – all rice growing, rodent abundant, venomous snake infested, high human population density countries – and yet why does India alone have so many snakebites?

Gharial with Prolapsed Cloaca

2007-05-19T08:01:00.001+05:30

Before surgery

After surgery

Photos by: Priyadarshini Govind

Last Sunday when Priya, the Croc Bank vet, saw the metre long gharial she promptly named him Li'l Dude. Li'l Dude was suffering from a prolapsed cloaca, parts of which were turning necrotic. Priya tucked it back in with what she calls a "drawstring" stitch. Today the sutures were removed and the cloaca held. Thankfully he didn't sneeze during this time and pop it out! :-)

MASS EXTINCTION

2007-05-15T13:45:00.000+05:30

By Fritz Huchzermeyer

As early man began to spread around the world
He killed the naïve megafauna
On every newly settled continent
With fire, overgrazing, agriculture he destroyed
Rich habitats, creating carsts and deserts
As men increased in numbers still
More pressure was exerted on
So many fragile habitats
Yet still persisted the belief
That Nature’s bounty was unlimited
And that its exploitation was our right
By natural and by religious law

Today’s technology enables us
To kill, destroy and to pollute
At an unprecedented pace
The engine always has been greed
And ignorance has always done its share
But now we find the pace of the extinctions
Is speeding at an ever faster rate

We also know that mass extinctions
Have never been selective and
Therefore we can not be so certain
That man will find a way himself
Out of this vicious cycle, out of death

To self-destruct we do not need the atom bomb
Just greed and ignorance will do
Watch out, already we are almost there.

Jan. 2006

Note - Carsts are denuded mountains which have lost all soil after deforestation. The word derives from the Karst Mountains in Yugoslavia, which were deforested for the Venetian merchant flotillas in the 16th century. The peasants' goats fed on the re-growth and prevented the return of the forest. Rains then washed away the soil. At present this process is happening in many places on Central American islands and on Madagascar - and probably elsewhere.

Summertime

2007-05-10T16:15:00.000+05:30

Summertime – and the livin is easy; Summertime and the livin is good …….……

that’s our Crocs’ lot at the Madras Crocodile Bank. Dredging work here ensures the ponds are deep and cool for the crocs to slip into. But for us mere mortals – it’s hot and steamy! How we wish we could share the air-cooled quarters of the King Cobra, or the recently deepened ponds of the muggers and salties!! Here, creatures really get the comforts!

The last few months here at the Croc Bank have certainly been busy. A number of noted herpetologists like Anslem De Silva from Sri Lanka and Brian Horne of San Diego Zoo rubbed shoulders with the Gap year student volunteers - Hannah, Rebecca, Adrian and Ben. They have been hard at work - cleaning croc pits under the watchful eyes of croc keepers - Ganga and Paiyandi. The other, more cerebral tasks varied from drawing reptile pictures for educational material and sign boards to cataloguing research papers of the vast and well stocked MCBT Herp Library – the largest in Asia.

The recent Nature Quest programme saw the Croc Bank’s homegrown Puppet Theatre go to the city. Chennai-ites were treated to Nanda’s and Veera’s comic story complete with hit songs from Tamil films - with a strong conservation message: Save Trees; save the Environment. A second story: Turtles Tale, told of Olive Kupamma and Ridley Supamma, two sari-clad sea turtles who have returned to their natal beach in front of the Croc Bank to lay their eggs. They discuss the hazards they have faced, and appeal to all of us to help make the sea turtles’ world a safer one.
Summer Camps at the MCBT have started and school children from in and around Chennai have the run of this vast eight-acre Reptile Awareness Centre. Pit Cleaning, Snake Tracking, Night Safaris and Close Encounters of the Reptilian Kind make the camps every would-be Steve Irwin’s dream.

And that is summertime at the Croc Bank

Great (?) almost failed moments in Indian Herp History - Episode 01

2007-05-06T07:41:00.000+05:30

By Ashok Captain

Amrita wanted to interview me about snake photography. Being allergic to interviews and hoping to deter her, I asked her to come to Katraj Snake Park, Pune on an early Sunday morning and watch us pop snakes.

We were collecting pictures for (1) a book that Rom and I were working on: Snakes of India, the Field Guide (http://draco-india.com) and (2) Mr. Khaire’s book and CD-ROM - Snakes of Maharashtra, Goa & Karnataka (for details contact the Katraj Snake Park, Pune, India in person; or try the Bombay Natural History Society). After several years of work, we realized we had decent images of several rare and/or obscure snakes, but almost no pictures of the more common ‘uns! This was the bad ol’ days of slide film. Would you rather blow 3 rolls of Velvia on a Medo Pit Viper, or a Checkered Keelback? I don’t expect an answer to that. Anyway that Sunday was an attempt to remedy the situation and we’d lined up a Boiga trigonata (Common Cat Snake), a Coelognathus helena helena (Common Trinket Snake), a Gongylophis conicus (Common Sand Boa) and an Oligodon arnensis (Common Kukri Snake). Rohit, my Senior Flasher (one who aims the main off-camera flash at the herp’s eye so that the (artificial) catch light is just right) and I set to work. Rohit is convinced there’s a whole bunch of blinded snakes out there with permanent retinal damage, but I digress.

We were well past the ‘Cat’ and Trinket when Amrita appeared, bleary-eyed. The astute reader will have inferred that Saturday night precedes Sunday morning and that while herpers have no life, reporters obviously do! We moved into a corner of Mr. K’s office and aimed our equipment (a tripod mounted camera with 3 flashes) at a small, flat piece of basalt that I felt complimented the colors of our next model – the Common Kukri. Baba, one of the keepers at the Park managed to get the snake set up just right and . . .

Sometimes snakes pose better in the dark. Mr. K was signing papers when we switched off the lights. Three of us huddled over the rock on which our hapless subject lay coiled. Another camera lay on the nearby sofa, ready for a quick change. Amrita watched wide-eyed, pen in hand . . .

Rohit, “Caps, hurry. The guy isn’t going to hang around all day.” I ignored R, fiddled with the ‘pod, got the composition just right, checked that the flashes were in position and blasted away. After 10 or 12 explosions (of light) I got more ambitious and asked Baba to rearrange the body coils and curl the tail tip more artistically. He complied. The snake was being unusually cooperative. I was squinting through the viewfinder when realization dawned and I started laughing uncontrollably. Rohit, “What’s so funny?” Weak with laughter, I managed to gasp, “There’s no film in the camera.” Rohit cracked up too; Mr. K buried his head in his hands. Amrita initially thought we were kidding, then realized we weren’t. Baba, who is used to odd ‘going-ons’ during such photo shoots, showed no reaction.

Fortunately the snake stayed put, we switched cameras, got the shots1 and Amrita got her interview. She discretely left out the part where we used a film-less camera.

1 See lower inset, p. 169; Snakes of India, the Field Guide – Whitaker, R. & Captain, A. 2004 & p. 38 A Guide to the Snakes of Maharashtra, Goa & Karnataka – Neelimkumar Khaire 2006.