Chandigarh, March 28: Punjab’s rivers may again teem with gharials nearly a century after this endangered crocodile species went extinct in this region.

“We have sent a project proposal to the Centre to revive the species in the state. It is a long process but we are hopeful it will bear fruit,” Punjab chief wildlife warden Dhirendra Singh said.

The gharial or Gavialis gangeticus, also known as the “fish-eating crocodile”, used to be found abundantly in Punjab but vanished because of poaching.

Wildlife officials say that no gharial sighting has been recorded in Punjab since 1920. An attempt in 1965 to revive the species in the state was unsuccessful.

The proposed project involves procuring gharial eggs and a large number of pairs for breeding before the animals are released into the rivers.

Gharials have very long and thin snouts, adapted to catching and eating fish. The snout’s shape changes throughout a gharial’s lifetime, usually becoming longer and thinner as the animal grows older. The jaws have between 106 and 110 razor-sharp teeth.

The males have a bulbous growth at the end of their snout, called a ghara. It functions during courtship as a visual stimulus for females. Gharials grow up to three to five metres in length.