Crocodile rescued in 5-hour operation in Oshiwara

The reptile was rescued around 2 am by an SGNP team with the help of WWA volunteers. Pic/Anurag Ahire

After a challenging, five-hour-long operation that took place in the early hours of Sunday, a Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) team and Wildlife Welfare Association (WWA) volunteers managed to successfully rescue an Indian marsh crocodile from a nullah in Oshiwara.

Range Forest Officer (RFO) Vijay Barabde from SGNP said, "The crocodile was securely captured around 2 am on Sunday by three members of the SGNP with the assistance of Honorary Wildlife Warden Rohit Mohite and his colleagues from the WWA. The 2.5-foot-long crocodile weighed 6 kg. It has undergone a medical evaluation by the SGNP veterinary officer and is healthy enough for release." The reptile will be released into its natural environment as soon as the medical certification is released.

According to Mohite, the SGNP team and 10 WWA volunteers reached the location where the crocodile had been spotted around 9 pm on Saturday to install a cage trap. "We realised that the crocodile can be caught by using other techniques and so our team members entered the water and by 2 am it was successfully rescued," he said.

The crocodile was first spotted a few days ago by a paani puri vendor in the area. He reported this to people in the neighbourhood but no one took him seriously. Later, a local resident spotted it and the sightings were reported to Raju Pednekar, a Shiv Sena leader and former councillor of the Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray(UBT) group, following which the forest department was alerted.

It is likely that the crocodile reached the nullah from the Oshiwara river which originates in the Aarey Milk Colony, flows through the Goregaon hills, crosses Aarey Milk Colony, and then empties into Malad creek.

The mugger crocodile (Crocodylus Palustris), also called the Indian marsh crocodile, is native to the Indian subcontinent, Sri Lanka, Burma, Pakistan and some parts of Iran. It is most commonly found in freshwater environments such as rivers, lakes, hill streams, village ponds and human-made reservoirs.

At one point, muggers used to be widespread throughout the subcontinent, but over time, their populations have dwindled due to habitat destruction, hunting, loss of prey base, human encroachment and increasing conflict situations.