Gharial, the Indian crocodile, has been declared critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). In its 2007 Red List of Threatened Species, which was released recently, the IUCN has included 188 new species and the gharial.

The IUCN Red List has put the number of breeding adult gharials in Nepal and India at 182 in 2006. This is a decline of 58 per cent as only a decade ago, the number of gharials stood at 436. Between 2006 and 2007, gharials have slipped from the endangered to the critically endangered list of the IUCN.

The IUCN report says these fish-eaters are restricted to the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Mahanadi river. In fact, gharials were once the prized possession of the Mahanadi river system. However, the Orissa Forest Department has managed to sight only three gharials in the river recently.

The Red List report must ring the warning bell for Orissa whose successful captive breeding programme has gone nowhere. The UNDP-sponsored gharial-breeding programme saw over 500 long-jawed reptile being bred at Nandankanan and released into the Mahanadi till 2001.