Place · mangrove delta & crocodile sanctuary · India
Bhitarkanika
Also known as Bhitarkanika, Gahirmatha, Kanika, olive ridley
The mangrove delta where the Brahmani, Baitarani and Dhamra meet the Bay of Bengal — the second largest mangrove system in India after the Sundarbans, and the one with the largest saltwater crocodile population in the country, including animals over six metres long.
- Function
- Landscape & environmental change
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 20.710, 86.900
Worth knowing
Gahirmatha beach on its seaward edge is the world's largest rookery of olive ridley turtles: several hundred thousand come ashore in a few nights of mass nesting. The ruined Hindu temples inside the forest belong to villages the sea and the mangrove took back, and the 1999 super-cyclone was blunted here by the forest itself.
Connections (1)
- In the same set asSimilipal
Similipal's sal forest is the catchment and Bhitarkanika's mangrove is the delta of the same drainage, three hundred kilometres apart. Between them they hold eastern India's largest elephant population, its only pseudo-melanistic tigers, the country's biggest saltwater crocodiles and the world's largest olive ridley rookery — and both are managed by the same forest department.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Bhitarkanika National Park”. Odisha Forest Department Bhitarkanika management plans; Wildlife Institute of India Gahirmatha nesting surveys.
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