Half day mugger crocodile workshop held at ponda

A half day workshop was jointly organised by the Mhadei Research Centre and the North Goa Division of the Goa Forest Department on the subject Understanding the Rescue, Rehabilitation and Awareness of Mugger Crocodile in Goa on 6^th June 2014.

This workshop was held at Conference hall of North Goa Forest Department Ponda Goa and was attended by 18 representatives of various NGO’s and wildlife rescuers from all over Goa.

The sessions included an introduction to Madras Crocodile Bank Trust and Mhadei Research Center and their projects, and sharing of experiences with crocodile rescues by members of 3 NGO volunteers.

This was followed by a screening of documentary Crocodile Blues on conservation of Gharial.

In the third and concluding session, Shricharan Desai, Research Associate, Mhadei Research Center, gave a presentation on proper handling and tagging of rescued crocodile. He explained that in Goa, on an average 10-15 crocodiles are rescued every year and that there is a need to study this human-crocodile interaction and try to address to this issue in more scientific and systematic way.

He explained further that the first phase of this project was to procure the several equipments as well as data sheets for detail records of the Mugger crocodiles Some of the major ones were GPS, distance finder, snare pole, surgical knife for scute cutting etc. In this whole project, scute cutting is very vital to mark the individual crocodile. Scute cutting technique and other requirements of data recording was presented to the participants.

Posters on human-crocodile conflicts in Philippines and Sri-Lanka were discussed before the participants, which resulted in vital discussions on human-crocodile interaction in Goa.

The program ended with some of the members asking questions, which initiated healthy discussions on crocodile rescues and releases. Making a crocodile specialist group/network for Goa, conducting awareness programs in schools (dedicated to crocodiles) in crocodile habitat areas, were some of the suggestions that were agreed upon by participants.