Gharials are critically endangered fish-eating crocodilians whose populations have crashed by 98%, with individual animals facing threats from fishing nets, sand mining, and river degradation.
Gharials entangled in fishing nets experience drowning - they are air-breathing reptiles that cannot survive prolonged submersion. The time from entanglement to death may extend minutes to over an hour as the animal struggles and weakens. Sand mining destroys nesting beaches and forces females to use suboptimal nesting sites, reducing reproductive success. The 2007-2008 mass mortality from gout - uric acid crystal deposition in joints and organs from river pollution - caused deaths involving organ failure and likely significant pain. River system degradation creates chronic physiological stress in surviving animals.