Drones for GoodGharials and muggers are crocodilians that bask on river banks. Counting them from the ground along long river stretches is slow. A team from WWF Nepal and the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, with partners, tested drone surveys in Chitwan National Park and published the results in PLOS One in August 2025.
According to the paper, a Wingtra One Gen II fixed-wing VTOL drone surveyed a 73 km river stretch in January and February 2024, during the species’ basking period. It captured 24,129 photographs across 27 flight missions, and an image analyst counted 323 crocodiles (205 gharials and 118 muggers). The authors report a cost of about US$0.61 per km for drones against about US$21 per km for ground surveys. The project was funded by a WWF-UK grant to WWF Nepal.