The Siamese crocodile is crucial to the survival of the wetlands in Southeast Asia, but it's close to becoming extinct. The World's Mary Kay Magistad visits a Cambodian wildlife rescue center to find out how conservationists there are trying to save the rare croc.
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MARCO WERMAN: I'm Marco Werman. This is The World. Pandas, tigers, and elephants are the poster animals for the cause of endangered wildlife – but spare a thought for the Siamese crocodile. The crocs used to be a key part of Southeast Asia's wetland ecosystems, but today they're close to extinction. Now, a project in Cambodia is trying to bring them back from the edge. The World's Mary Kay Magistad has our report.
MARY KAY MAGISTAD: To get to some of the last Siamese crocodiles in Southeast Asia, you have to run a gauntlet of gibets. The small apes are in roomy cages here at the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center, about an hour south of Pnhom Penh. Nearby are lower wooden cages with iron mesh. Inside, resting in pools of water, are a couple of crocodiles, each about six-feet-long with opaque light green eyes. They also each have four distinctive scales on the back of their heads – a sign they might be Siamese.
ADAM STARR: This is one of the crocodiles we had to do DNA tests on. He might lunge at us.
MAGISTAD: But he doesn't. Adam Starr, a conservationist with the group Fauna and Flora International, points out that might be in part because the croc is missing a leg, apparently from a recent fight over a female. Starr says this guy's been put in this cage by himself both to heal and to keep him away from females until researchers can determine whether or not he's a full-blooded Siamese they can use for breeding. Starr sure hopes he is.
STARR: The Siamese crocodile is one of the rarest crocodiles in the world. What's happened though in this century is that poaching, crocodile farms, and general lack of understanding have diminished the populations.
MAGISTAD: Siamese crocs once lived in swamps and rivers from Laos to Borneo. Starr says their disappearance has been bad for the regions wetlands.
STARR: The crocodiles do play significant role in rivering and aquatic ecosystems in Southeast Asia. They eat larger carnivorous fish. They burrow their ways between lakes and rivers, improving water flow and improving the transfer of genetic information between what would be land-locked water bodies. They prey on snakes, birds, and other small animals that are along the riverside. So they actually try and keep checks and balances.
MAGISTAD: But the balance of these ecosystems has been thrown off, Starr says, as the crocodiles have disappeared. Now, the group is working with the Cambodian government, here at the Wildlife Rescue Center, to genetically test 69 crocodiles who look like they might be Siamese. They need to do this testing because some of the smaller fresh water Siamese crocs may have interbred with larger saltwater species. The center's director, Nec Ratonopick, says they've got to be careful.
NEC RATONOPICK: We don't want to breed and release the hybrid one to the water because it's really dangerous.
MAGISTAD: That's because saltwater crocodiles attack people, and Siamese crocodiles generally don't. They prefer fish and birds. Today's lunch is chicken – the whole chicken. Adam Starr says that's important.
STARR: They digest the bones, they digest the brains, the ligaments, everything. That's how it gets it nutrients.
MAGISTAD: Today, Starr is helping to feed the crocodiles. He enters one of their forested enclosures. One is almost submerged in a pond except for his eyes. He's got his eyes on the chicken, which Adam Starr dangles above him on a long pole. The croc lunges – it hisses when the chicken falls out of reach. Starr tries again.
STARR: Ah, there you go.
MAGISTAD: Ideally, Starr says, these crocodiles would be in the wild finding their own food. But since there are only 250 Siamese crocodiles left in Cambodia and poaching remains a problem, they're safer here for now. Starr says once the DNA samples get sent off and tested, there will be a clearer idea of which of these are Siamese crocodiles, and then the breeding can begin.
STARR: The reason why we hope there will be successes is crocodiles are very resilient species, where you can do a breeding release program, you can introduce them in the wild using certain protocols, and there is a very high chance of success for it.
MAGISTAD: As the captive crocodiles eat, a small crowd of Cambodian tourists gathers to watch and laugh when one crocodile near the fence where they're standing, chomps down on a chicken and a perfectly formed egg rolls out. But their self-appointed guide, 14-year-old local village girl named Shantia, says that's as close as she ever wants to come to a crocodile. She says, “They're scary,†and if she saw one in the wild, she'd run. The Center's director, Nec Ratonopick, says that's a typical attitude among people no longer used to living with crocodiles. But, he says, crocodiles have long been considered mystical beasts around here. They're a part of the creation story carved into the walls of the ancient temple Unker Watt, and the hill tribes who lived with them in one of their last remaining habitats in the Cardamom mountain region, respect and revere the Siamese crocodile.
RATONOPICK: Some local community who live in the deep forest, believe that when someone hurt a crocodile, they get bad luck or something like that.
MAGISTAD: Do you believe that?
RATONOPICK: Yeah.
MAGISTAD: And he believes the most respectful thing he can do for these crocodiles is to give them back the place they deserve in the region's wetlands – and in the Cambodian people's imaginations. For The World, I'm Mary Kay Magistad, Phnom Thmal, Cambodia.
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