5 months ago
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For those surviving on the Meenachil stream banks, the brushed splash of an otter surfacing has present go a regular worry. Their booming numbers person stirred fearfulness and fascination successful adjacent measure. Now, a elaborate survey sheds airy connected wherever these elusive creatures are multiplying and why.
According to the report, otter numbers are shrinking successful the precocious reaches of the river. But arsenic the Meenachil flows downward, past farmlands with wide stretches wherever fallow onshore exist, their numbers surge. From Pala, Mutholy, and Kidangoor up to Parampuzha and Chungam, otter groups usually fig betwixt 5 and ten.
But question a small farther downstream, from Panampady and Malarikkal towards Kumarakom, and those groups swell dramatically, with 20 to 25 otters commonly spotted together. The survey squad adjacent recorded daytime sightings with 1 successful Kumarakom and 5 astatine Chungam.
While reduced quality enactment connected the precocious reaches has meant less run-ins with the animal, successful the downstream areas from Kidangoor to Kumarakom, wherever radical perpetually interact with the river, struggle is much frequent. Every twelvemonth year, 2 to 5 radical are bitten and food stocks and sportfishing nets excessively instrumentality a dense deed from otter activity.
Most of the biting incidents were reported astatine stream ghats . Continuous chromatic embankments built on immoderate portions of the stream person near otters with lone these openings to ascent ashore, bringing them into nonstop interaction with section populace.
The survey besides highlights that otters are captious markers of a river’s ecological wellness and are protected by conservation laws. The challenge, it says, is to support some the taxon and the radical who unrecorded alongside them. To that end, the study suggests a acceptable of applicable solutions specified arsenic creating pathways on stone-lined banks truthful otters tin haul retired without entering ghats , installing steel-mesh enclosures to marque ghats safer, restoring riparian vegetation, offering assistance to those injured and compensating for harm to food and sportfishing gear.
The survey was jointly carried retired by the Water Resources Development and Utilization Centre, Kottayam, the Tropical Institute of Ecological Sciences; and the Social Forestry Wing of the Forest Department, with enactment from the Kerala State Biodiversity Board.
