By Pervez Bari, TwoCircles.net
Bhopal: World Conservation Union, (IUCA), has praised the crisis management efforts undertaken in Madhya Pradesh to check deaths of alligators.
The encomiums have been given in a letter to Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh through which IUCA has also offered its cooperation in this connection.
The letter has been sent by the head of alligator segment of World Conservation Union Dr Graham Web to Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh in the latter’s capacity as incharge of Union Environment and Forest Ministry. Dr Graham, while praising alligator crisis management in Madhya Pradesh, has said it was due to efforts undertaken by Madhya Pradesh government that necessary cooperation could be extended at the international level for checking deaths of alligators.
Meanwhile, death rate of alligators in Chambal has come down. So far in the month of March not a single alligator has died.
A four-member team was sent to National Chambal Sanctuary which comprised alligator experts Dr FW Fitz Huchzermeyer, Onderstepoort, South Africa, Dr Paulo Marteli, Ocean Park, Hong Kong, Dr Samuel Martin, Law Freme Oxe, France and Dr Brian Stacy, University of Florida, USA. This team made an in-depth study from January 28, 2008 to February 12, 2008. The team said that the efforts undertaken at the state-level were effective. In his letter, Web has explicitly written that remarkable progress has been made in management of this crisis mainly due to the strategy adopted in India.
It may be mentioned that deaths of alligators had started since December 2007 in 35 kilometres area at the fag end of National Chambal Sanctuary. This area is jointly controlled by Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. For the first time deaths of alligators were reported on December 8, from the area managed by Uttar Pradesh and since December 9, 2007 alligators in Madhya Pradesh area also started dying. Swinging into action, the state government contacted national and international experts. During the tour of the sanctuary by Chief Conservator of Forests, Dr. P.B. Gangopadhyaya on December 15, 2007, necessary information was collected and an appeal was issued to all the alligators experts.
Madhya Pradesh Government sought Union government’s intervention so that assistance by national and international experts could be availed to tackle this grave situation. On January 7, 2008 the Union Environment and Forest Ministry organised a national-level meeting where Chief Conservators of Forests, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, national alligator experts and non-government organisation World Nature Fund-India were invited. At the meeting an Alligator Crisis Management Team, headed by World Nature Fund-India, was constituted.
According to the team, alligators had died of visceral gout due to kidney failure. Main cause of kidney failure was toxic effluents released by industrial units in Yamuna river which killed fish. These fish (stock food of alligators) were eaten by alligators leading to their death. ([email protected])