BHUBANESWAR: Keeping up with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s national gharial conservation programme, the Odisha government on Wednesday rolled out the second phase of its ‘gharial species recovery project’ to revive the population of the fish-eating crocodiles in Mahanadi river system.
PCCF (wildlife)-cum-chief wildlife warden Prem Kumar Jha said as part of the project, seven adult captive-bred gharials - two males and five females - from Nandankanan and Gharial Research and Conservation Unit (GRACU), Tikarpada were released in the fresh waters of Mahanadi near Satkosia gorge.
While five gharials - one male and four females, were released from Nandankanan, another male and a female were released from GRACU.
Three of the gharials have been tagged with GPS-VHF transmitters programmed to give their GPS and VHF locations while the remaining four gharials have been tagged with double VHF transmitters.
The GPS locations from the GPS transmitters can be viewed in a designated web portal while VHF signals from the VHF transmitters can be received using Yagi antenna and receiver from a distance of 1.5 to 3 km based on the terrain. Three postgraduate research fellows have been engaged in post-release monitoring of the gharials.
“The project aims to secure the long-term survival of gharials in the Mahanadi river system and retain the pride of Odisha being home to all three Indian crocodilian species - gharial, mugger and saltwater/estuarine crocodile,” Jha said.
Forest officials said fewer than 250 gharials remain in the wild, mainly in India with Odisha being their southernmost habitat. There were only about eight gharials in Mahanadi when the project was launched in 2019 with the release of 19 crocodiles in five rounds. Despite challenges pertaining to their survivability, 16 gharials have been spotted in the river system in the latest census in 2025, they added.
Officials from Nandankanan Zoo said the success of the project can also be gauged from the fact that the breeding of gharials was also witnessed in Mahanadi in 2021, after a gap of nearly four decades. This breeding, they said, is seen every year there with over 130 baby crocodiles taking birth in the river system in the last four years.