Gharials are critically endangered crocodilians from South Asian rivers whose population has collapsed to fewer than 900 individuals due to river degradation, fishing nets, and sand mining.
Gharial welfare is acutely threatened by drowning in fishing nets — an agonising death for an air-breathing reptile that may struggle for hours before losing consciousness. Juveniles released from captive breeding programmes face high mortality from gill nets and subsistence fishing. The destruction of sandbanks by mining removes nesting sites that female gharials return to year after year — a site-fidelity that makes them especially vulnerable to habitat change. Gharials that cannot haul out on undisturbed sand cannot thermoregulate, reproduce, or rest effectively. Each remaining adult is irreplaceable given the species' critical status and slow reproductive rate.