India's Border Security Force (BSF) has ordered frontier units to explore deploying crocodiles and venomous snakes in riverine stretches along the 4,096km India-Bangladesh border, where difficult terrain has made conventional fencing impossible. The internal directive, dated March 26, instructs personnel to assess the "feasibility of deploying reptiles in vulnerable riverine gaps" as a deterrent against undocumented migration and smuggling. Human rights activists and wildlife conservationists have condemned the plan, warning that the animals cannot distinguish between migrants and local residents on either side of the border, and that flooding in the swampy frontier zones could spread venomous snakes into fishing communities; wildlife experts have also cautioned that relocating crocodiles outside their natural range would likely prove fatal to the animals themselves.