Journal
of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 April 2022 | 14(4):
20930–20934
ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN
0974-7893 (Print)
https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.7769.14.4.20930-20934
#7769 | Received 02 December
2021 | Final received 19 March 2022 | Finally accepted 30 March 2022
First photographic record of the
presence of Smooth-coated Otter Lutrogale perspicillata in Ghaghra
River, India
Saurav Gawan
1, Ashish K. Panda 2 &
Aakash Mohan Rawat 3
1–3 National Mission for Clean Ganga
Project, Wildlife Institute of India, Chandrabani,
Dehradun, Uttarakhand 248001, India.
1 gawan.saurav44@gmail.com (corresponding author), 2
pelochelyspanda@gmail.com, 3 aakashrawat4444@gmail.com
Editor: Atul Borkar,
Mhadei Research Center,
Wild Otters, Goa, India. Date of publication: 26
April 2022 (online & print)
Citation: Gawan, S., A.K. Panda & A.M. Rawat (2022). First
photographic record of the presence of Smooth-coated Otter Lutrogale
perspicillata in Ghaghra
River, India. Journal of
Threatened Taxa 14(4): 20930–20934. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.7769.14.4.20930-20934
Copyright: © Gawan et al. 2022. Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction,
and distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to
the author(s) and the source of publication.
Funding: The National Mission for Clean Ganga, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of India.
Competing interests: The authors
declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: We would like to acknowledge the
National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of
India for funding the present study. We would like to extend our deepest
gratitude to the principal investigators of NMCG-WII project; Dr. S.A. Hussain
and Dr. Ruchi Badola, for facilitating the study and
providing their intellectual & technical inputs. We are grateful to the
Chief Wildlife Warden, other officials and staff of Uttar Pradesh Forest
Department for providing us with the necessary permissions for undertaking the
ecological assessment of the Ghaghra River. We would
like to thank Mr. S.K. Zeeshan Ali and Ms. Aishwarya Ramachandran for creating
maps of the study area.
Growing human populations and
high resource dependency have led to depletion of ecosystems in rivers and
wetlands (Moser et al. 1996; Prigent et al. 2012).
Depleted resources and disturbed habitat have made dependent species such as
otters increasingly vulnerable (de Silva et al. 2015; Wright et al.
2015). Shy by nature (Gupta et al. 2020), a
declining trend has been observed due to anthropogenic pressures (Roos et al.
2015), loss of habitat, exploitation (de Silva et al. 2015; Wright et al. 2015) and poaching (Savage &
Shrestha 2018). Otters have, thus, become very rare.
Otters are fish-eating,
semi-aquatic carnivora of the order Mustelidae (Pardini 1998). Three
species occur in the Indian sub-continent: Eurasian Otter Lutra
lutra, Smooth-coated Otter Lutrogale
perspicillata, and Asian Small-clawed Otter Aonyx cinereus. The
Ganga River basin is home to all three species (Chanda 1991). The Smooth-coated
Otter is categorized as ‘Vulnerable’ in the IUCN Red List (Khoo et al. 2021),
and is protected under Schedule II of the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act,
1972. There have been very few studies on the Smooth-coated Otter in India
(Hussain & Choudhury 1997).
The Smooth-coated Otter occurs
southwards across the Himalaya. Beyond the Indian subcontinent, its range extends
across Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Kampuchea, South-Western China, Malaysia,
Brunei, and Indonesia with the lone presence of Lutra
perspicillata maxwelli
in southern Iraq marshlands (Macdonald et al. 1986; Hussain & Choudhury
1997).
Despite the wide distribution of
Smooth-coated Otters (Hussain & Choudhury 1997), no recorded information
was available on their occurrence from the main stem Ghaghra
River. Historically, lack of a detailed ecological assessment in Ghaghra River from origin to its confluence with the Ganga
has resulted in this knowledge gap. The present sightings are the first
photographic records of Smooth-coated Otters from the Ghaghra,
a major transboundary tributary of the Ganga.
During the rapid ecological
assessment undertaken by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in 2019–2020
under the project “Planning and Management for Aquatic Species Conservation and
Maintenance of Ecosystem Services in the Ganga River Basin for a Clean Ganga”
funded by the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), Ministry of Jal Shakti,
Government of India, two direct sightings of smooth-coated otter were recorded
from two different locations in lower stretch of Ghaghra
River.
The first sighting was recorded
on 17 December 2020 at 1230 h IST in the waters of Ghaghra
River near Bhatia village of Basti district in Uttar Pradesh (26.649°N
82.547°E) during the boat survey (Figure 1).
The moment was captured through Panasonic DMC-FZ1000- Lumix digital
camera. The animal was observed for a couple of hours while it was searching
for food along the bank. Its length was around 1 m with smooth and sleek fur
(Image 1). The colour was dark brown on the upper
side, and undersides were lighter as stated by Gray (1865).
Small eyes & ear, whitish-coloured upper lip (Image 2) and heavier teeth (Image 3)
were observed (Tate 1947). The tail of the animal was flattened dorsoventrally
at the tip (Image 4) (Hwang & Larivière 2005).
Rhinarium was naked and dark situated anteriorly with a barely convex dorsal
border (Image 5), the typical features of a Smooth-coated Otter (Harrison,
1968).
The landscape featured river
islands, high sandbanks, thick riparian vegetation dominated by Saccharum spp. on both banks of the river (Image 6). The
elevated banks in the stretch are prone to erosion with the continuous flowing
waters of the Ghaghra River. The water depth at the
point ranged 1.7–2.6 m, and the channel width was 380 m.
The second sighting was recorded
on 21 December 2020 at 1447 h IST near Raja Tengaraha
village in Ballia district of Uttar Pradesh (25.828°N 84.528°E). This was
approximately 250 km downstream from the first sighting. The channel depth at
sight ranged 2–3.5 m, and the channel width was 310 m; there were high
sandbanks on both sides of the river with riparian vegetation dominated by Saccharum spp. Here, the otter was sighted swimming
in the river near the bank, and later it moved to the sandbanks (Image 7),
where it rubbed itself (Image 8) for a while; before jumping back into the
water.
Otters lead an amphibious life,
which gives them the advantage of disappearing into the wide riverine
landscapes and enhances their role in many ecological processes pertaining to
the flood plains (Khan et al. 2014). Smooth-coated Otters thus play a critical
role in maintaining balance of freshwater ecosystems (Sivasothi
1995; Acharya & Lamsal 2010; Gupta et al. 2016).
The otter populations are declining in their ranges due to habitat loss and
poaching activities (Hussain 1999; Nawab 2007, 2009; Nawab & Gautam 2008).
The situation gets grave as their population is mostly fragmented and sighted
in close proximity to protected areas like Corbett Tiger Reserve (Hussain
1993).
Even though the Smooth-coated
Otter is distributed throughout the country, there have been very few sighting
records from India with occasional notes on their occurrence from different
parts of the country (Hinton & Fry 1923; Pocock 1940; Chitampalli
1979). The present sighting gives hope to the survival of this shrinking
population. As the Smooth-coated Otter is a threatened species, this can be an
opportunity for in-depth study of the population that will further aid in
developing conservation measures in the area; far from any protected area
(Gupta et al. 2015). Further, regular monitoring of this landscape coupled with
community engagement programmes will aid in
generating a database on the population status of the species. Detailed studies
will assist in taking ahead the research work initiated in the year 1988 by the
Wildlife Institute of India under the project in National Chambal Sanctuary
(NCS), to study the ecology of the Smooth-coated Otters, one of the top
carnivores of the freshwater ecosystem (Gupta et al. 2016).
Table 1. Details of observation
site of smooth-coated otter in Ghaghra River sighted
during the post-monsoon ecological assessment.
|
Date |
Coordinates |
Habitat characteristics |
No of Individuals sighted |
Record details |
Anthropogenic activities |
Remarks |
|
17/12/2020 |
26.6490N 82.5470E |
Sandbank with high slopes,
water depth range 1.7 to 2.6 m and channel width 380 m. |
1 |
Direct sighting |
Riverbed agriculture |
Swimming in the river |
|
21/12/2020 |
25.8280N 84.5280E |
High sandbank in close vicinity
of tall grasses, water depth range 2 to 3.5 m and channel width 310 m. |
1 |
Direct sighting |
Riverbed agriculture |
Swimming in the river |
For figure &
image - - click here
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