Critically Endangered
Gharial
Gavialis gangeticus
The wild Gharial population has declined drastically since the 1930s and is limited to only 2% of its historical range today.
Appearance
The Gharial is olive-coloured, with adults being darker than young, that have dark brown cross bands and speckles. Its back turns almost black at 20 years of age, but its belly is yellowish-white. It has four transverse rows of two scales on the neck, that continue along the back.
Two individuals in the weight range of 103–121 kg (227–267 lb) had an average measured bite force of 1,784–2,006 N (401–451 lbf).
Range and habitat
The Gharial once thrived in all the major river systems of the northern Indian subcontinent, from the Indus River in Pakistan, the Ganges in India, the Brahmaputra River in northeastern India and Bangladesh to the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar. In the early 20th century, it was considered common in the Indus River and its Punjabi tributaries. During surveys in 2008 and 2009, no Gharial was sighted in the river.
Ganges, where 494 gharials were released between 2009 and 2012 in Hastinapur Wildlife Sanctuary. Gandaki River downstream the Triveni barrage west of Valmiki Tiger Reserve and adjacent to Sohagi Barwa Sanctuary.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
The Gharial is the most thoroughly aquatic crocodilian. The mugger crocodile also basks on sandy beaches, but unlike the Gharial climbs steep embankments and rocks, and moves farther away from beaches for both basking and nest building.
Captive females breed at a body length of 3 m (9.8 ft). During the breeding season, adult males emit a sudden, high amplitude, pulsatile sound underwater in the range of 9–55 milliseconds that is audible on land at a distance of more than 500 m (1,600 ft).
In crisis
The wild Gharial population has declined drastically since the 1930s and is limited to only 2% of its historical range today. The population is breeding since 2008, and increased to about 42 adults by 2013. Surveys in 2015 revealed a population of 90 gharials, among them 59 breeding adults.
The population increased from 15 gharials in 2010 to 54 individuals recorded in March 2015 on a stretch of 320 km (200 mi). 35 of these gharials were wild-born. In 2017, this population was estimated at 617–761 mature individuals and more than 1250 individuals by two different survey teams. 411 nests were found.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Gharial is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Gharial, Wikidata item Q17134. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
