Plastic clean-up brings crocodiles back to Indian river
Crocodiles are not Sneha Shahi’s favourite animal, but every time she sees one now she smiles. And she sees plenty.
Sneha led a campaign to clean up the filthy river, stuffed with plastic waste, that winds its way through the campus of Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in Gujarat, India. Ridding the river of plastic had an unexpected outcome – bringing crocodiles back.
“We used to joke about how there can be a crocodile in our college’s stream, ‘it s not possible, it s not safe!’ Then we realized it
not being there was the issue … not the other way around. It s his habitat and we’ve ruined it and we ought to do whatever we can to revive this ecosystem,” she told the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in an interview.