The critically endangered Red-Crowned Roofed Turtle has been reintroduced in the Ganga river as part of the government's flagship programme of cleaning the river and enhancing its biodiversity.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Union Jal Shakti Minister C R Paatil said, 20 such turtles were released in Uttar Pradesh's Haiderpur Wetland On April 26.
It is a UNESCO Ramsar site near the Bijnor Ganga Barrage within the Hastinapur Wildlife Sanctuary. This human-made wetland was formed in 1984 with the Madhya Ganga Barrage construction on the river's floodplain.
Believed to be on the brink of extinction in north India, the Red-Crowned Roofed Turtle has been reintroduced into the river through a carefully planned scientific rehabilitation effort, the minister said.
He described it as an important milestone in restoring the ecology of the Ganga river. According to his ministry, there has been no confirmed report of adult Red-Crowned Roofed turtle sighting in the main channel of the Ganga in the past 30 years.
To make the reintroduction project a success, each turtle has been fitted with tracking devices so that their movement patterns and progress in adapting to the environment can be monitored.
According to officials, the turtles were divided into two groups for the reintroduction process.
One group was released in the upstream of the Haiderpur Wetland barrage and the other on the downstream in the main channel of the Ganga to determine which method is more effective for turtle reintroduction, they said The turtles would be tracked and monitored over the next two years.
The Union ministry said this was the first attempt at reintroducing this species in the Ganga by following a 'soft' versus 'hard' release strategy. The aim is to house the species in the Ganga in a stable manner with the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department's help, the ministry added.
Paatil credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his vision that took the shape of the Namami Gange Mission for the turtle reintroduction initiative.
Preparing for the reintroduction of the freshwater reptiles, the Turtle Survival Alliance India project team, with support from the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), conducted a detailed assessment of turtle diversity and abundance in the Haiderpur Wetland Complex (HWC) in 2020.
This was followed by a 2022 Habitat Evaluation study on the newly formed turtle sanctuary along the Ganga near Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh.
The study along HWC suggested the presence of nine turtle species whereas indirect evidence of five turtle species was found in Prayagraj.
One of the findings of the 2020, 2022 and prior studies was that none of the viable populations or individuals of Red-Crowned Roofed turtle were sighted in the stretch of the Ganga, thereby suggesting that it was the most endangered species in entire north India.
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