Kendrapara/Berhampur: The Bhitarkanika National Park has re-established itself as an ideal habitation corridor for estuarine crocodiles with their population maintaining its rising graph according to findings of its latest headcount.

As many as 1,698 crocodiles, including the albino species, were counted this year along the water bodies of the Mahanadi deltaic region, while the census figure recorded last year stood at 1,682, said Rajnagar mangrove (wildlife) forest divisional officer Bimal Prasanna Acharya.

The latest census figure of these animals was released by the forest department on Tuesday.

Three giant male crocodiles measuring more than 20-feet-long were sighted by enumerators. This included a 21-foot-long crocodile which finds a pride of place in the Guinness book of record as world's largest living crocodile. This apart, as many as 40 large-size crocodiles of 14 to 19 feet were enumerated.

However, the population of mugger, an endangered crocodile species, has declined in the Ghodahada irrigation reservoir in Ganjam district.

The estimated marsh crocodile population has gone down from 49 during 2016 and 55 during 2017 to 28 this year inside the dam, while 17 others have migrated to nearby ponds, said Berhampur's divisional forest officer Asish Kumar Behera.

This reservoir located adjoining the Lakhari valley sanctuary was part of a medium irrigation project on Ghodahada river.

Construction of the project took around 15 years and it was completed in 1977. It was believed that the crocodiles living in the tank near the Ujaleswar temple had migrated to the Ghodahada reservoir during a time when the tank and the reservoir had overflowed during monsoons. First crocodile census had been conducted in this reservoir in 2008.

Mugger population was quite unstudied species in the reservoir area before 2008. The main existing information is the personal communication with local community that Mugger crocodiles were found in the large pond of the temple before 2006 and these Mugger crocodile migrated to the reservoir area after 2006, DFO said.