MUMBAI, MAY 3: Now even the animals are dying in polluted Powai lake. On Monday morning, a dead 12-foot-long male crocodile washed ashore at one end of the lake startling bystanders and confirming beyond doubt that the area was a habitat for this highly endangered reptile.
       Feroz Khan, a security guard with the Maharashtra State Angling Association (MSAA), was patrolling the lake in a motor boat early this morning when he saw the bloated body of the dead crocodile floating on its back near the isolated northern shores of the lake.
       Officials of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) were alerted and the dead reptile brought ashore in a boat and later handed over to forest department officials.
       The Indian Marsh Crocodile (Crocodylus Palustri) is a highly endangered species, a Schedule I animal under the Wildlife Act on par with the Indian tiger. It was once nearly hunted to extinction for its hide.
       ``I've been on the lake for 12 years, but I've never seen anything like this,'' said BabbanPatekar, a caretaker at the MSAA. According to him there are over 20 crocodiles in the lake, some over 15 feet long. They can sometimes be seen sunning themselves on the tiny islands in the lake.
       Naturalists are hardly surprised. Blue-green algae, voracious water hyacinth, and the pumping of over 1 million litres of sewage into Powai lake have altered the bio-diversity of the lake.
       According to Gordon Rodricks, General Secretary of the MSAA, thousands of fishes in the lake died in 1992 after a builder pumped out lake water, severely depleting oxygen levels in the lake.
       ``The century-old lake represents a typical case of environmental degradation due to urbanisation. Though it has escaped industrial pollution, it is polluted by untreated domestic sewage, silt from construction and idol immersion,'' says Pramod Salaskar, who did his doctorate on the environment of the lake last year. He theorised that the crocodile could have died after ingesting chemicals emanating from the sewage pipelines. ``I haveseen chemicals being discharged from pipelines flowing into the lake,'' he added.
       However, J C Daniel of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), a world authority on Indian reptiles and amphibians, felt that it may be too premature to attribute the death of the reptile to pollution. ``Only a post-mortem can decisively establish the cause of death,'' he said adding that crocodiles had fairly long life spans and lived for over 50 years.