🤯 Did You Know (click to read)
Many protected river stretches now restrict sand mining during breeding season to safeguard nests.
Sandbanks are essential nesting habitats for gharials, providing elevated, sun-warmed sites above water level. Commercial sand mining extracts these substrates for construction use. Removal of sandbanks eliminates nesting grounds outright or destabilizes remaining areas. Machinery and human presence disturb breeding females during the critical nesting season. Even partial extraction can change slope angles and moisture retention, affecting incubation success. Because nesting sites are geographically limited, their loss has disproportionate impact. Habitat destruction occurs not only in water but in the sediment that shapes it.
💥 Impact (click to read)
Sand mining represents an invisible threat compared to overt poaching. A river may appear intact while its reproductive substrate vanishes. Without elevated sandbanks, females cannot safely deposit eggs. Repeated disturbance forces nesting into suboptimal sites vulnerable to flooding. Each removed bank is equivalent to erasing a maternity ward.
The crisis illustrates how construction demand in distant cities can destabilize remote ecosystems. Urban expansion indirectly dictates whether a prehistoric predator can reproduce. Conservation requires regulating extraction practices and designating protected sand stretches. For the gharial, sand is not scenery—it is survival infrastructure.
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