Fishing cat study exposes heavy metal presence in Sundarbans
Times of India | 25 February 2025
12 Kolkata: A study on impact of pollution on fishing cats — Bengal's state animal — in the Indian Sundarbans has pointed to heavy metal presence in the mangroves.
As per initial findings, there's presence of heavy metals such as lead and chromium in the fishing cats' scat samples, their environmental samples — water, soil, vegetation — and also in food chain — fish, rodents, crabs.
The study has been led by Samrat Chakraborty of Calcutta University's dept of zoology, the principal investigator, with prof Goutam Kr Saha and Tanoy Mukherjee, both from Indian Statistical Institute, and Joydip Kundu of city-based NGO SHER serving as co-principal investigators.
Taken up under the Wildlife Conservation Trust's BEES Grants, the study at Pakhirala, Patharpratima and Lothian Wildlife Sanctuary indicates that extensive use of chemical larvicides alongside industrial effluent from the Metropolitan is the fundamental cause for the presence of such metals in the environment.
"The analysis to find presence of microplastics is on. The final report will be out in Apr," said Chakraborty.
According to him, scats and the environmental samples were initially collected. "This was followed by acid digestion and then quantification of heavy metals by using Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry technique (ICP-OES) to arrive at the initial results," he elaborated.
According to Chakraborty, a significant amount of lead and chromium (microgram) was found in every 5 grams of scat samples.
"The presence of heavy metal in environmental samples, too, is high in per one gram of sample. These are basic results, showing the trend of heavy metal presence in the environment," he added.
According to Kundu, awareness camps have been conducted in Pakhirala where school teachers of forest fringe areas participated to make students aware against uncontrolled use of plastics.
Under the study — ‘Mangrove Menace: The Silent Threat of Heavy Metals and Microplastics to Fishing Cats in the Sundarbans Mangroves, West Bengal' — the team collected scat samples of fishing cats from forested islands and those near human habitation. While Pakhirala and Patharpratima are characterised by human settlements, Lothian is a forest island.
An earlier study had raised worry over presence of microplastics in gastrointestinal tracts of 13 edible estuarine fish species in Sundarbans. Fishing cats in wetland areas primarily rely on fish as their main prey. However, they are also known to consume frogs, crabs and rodents. According to a camera-trap study by the forest dept, Indian Sundarbans is home to approximately 385 fishing cats.
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