Altogether 36 estuarine crocodile babies have emerged from the artificially hatched eggs at Bhitarkanika National Park, marking the culmination of this year's nesting season for the reptile, a senior forest official said.
The hatchlings will be released in a "captive pond" in the park and reared till they grow up to one metre, he said.
"Of the forty eggs collected from the wild for artificial nesting, 36 have hatched. The sight of baby crocodiles breaking out of eggshells and crawling aimlessly around the breeding centre was a visual treat," Divisional Forest Officer, Rajnagar Mangrove (wildlife) Division, Bimal Prasanna Acharya, said.
Earlier this month, naturally bred crocodile fledglings had broken out of their eggshells to make their way to water bodies in and around the park, he said.
"The emergence of baby crocs from the nests, both in captivity and in the wild, marks the culmination of the annual breeding season of these reptiles," Acharya stated.
Usually, it takes three years for a baby to grow up to one metre, the DFO said.
"The baby crocodiles are not immediately released in the wild as there is possibility of predators devouring them. The mortality rate of croc hatchlings is exceedingly high. Out of five hundred baby crocodiles, only one reaches adulthood," he claimed.
The forest officials had kept the national park closed from May 1 to July 31 owing to the nesting period of the reptiles.
Funded by the United National Development Programme and Food and Agriculture Organisation, the rear and release programme of crocodiles has been going on here since 1975, Acharya said.
The number of crocodiles at Bhitarkanika has increased from 96 in 1974 to 1,698 this year, he said.
"Adequate conservation measures by the state forest department have led to a systematic rise in the number of these reptiles over the years," the DFO added.
Bhitarkanika is also home to a 23-foot-long salt-water crocodile, which figured in the Guinness Book of World Records in 2006 as the largest crocodile in the world.
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