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CROCODOPOLIS world of crocodilians TM SCIENCE · CULTURE · INDUSTRY · NEWS · COMMUNICATION · CONSERVATION
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NEWS
The CROC PRESS Regular coverage of crocodilians and people in headlines worldwide.
Wes von Papineäu, News Page Editor Email: crocnews@crocodopolis.net _________________________________________________
Week of 6 January 08
"Crocodile Tears are Real"
Check out this week's Croc TV featurette.
11 January 08 Michigan to get new alligator park
David Critchlow, owner of Critchlow' Alligator Sanctuary and Zoological Gardens has announced that his enterprise received unanimous approval from the Athens Township Planning Commission yesterday.
Critchlow's park, scheduled to open in May, will cover four of 16.6 acres. Visitors to the park will be able to browse through several exhibits of alligators, snakes, frogs, turtles and more.
Critchlow said that education will the primary objective of the park, in addition to his animal rescue operation. For more information, visit http://www.critchlowalligatorsanctuary.com.
10 January 08 Mystery epidemic Puts gharial on the brink
From India, more press about the epidemic of loss amongst that county's few remaining gharials (The Indian Gharial, Gavialis gangeticus).
Wildlife film-maker Naresh Bedi was quoted "Their reflexes were not working. They were trying to keep their head up above the water. Their eyes were closed. So, I don't know what they were suffering from."
The paper goes on to state that post-mortem results show presence of lead in the dead bodies, but continued "if the gharials died from lead poisoning why did it not affect other wildlife in the Chambal like the crocodile or migratory birds?"
The Environment Ministry has called in experts but with no one being able to name the killer disease, the future remains grim for the surviving gharials. [For further perspective, please see "Conservation group offers revealing Report of mass Gharial mortality," below.] http://www.ibnlive.com/news/mystery-epidemic-puts-gharial-on-the-brink/56113-11.html 10 January 08 The Gator People! Strange creatures haunt the Everglades. And that's just the humans.
From Florida a long piece about some of the local characters within the state and their interaction and relationships with the local alligators.
Amongst the snippits:
- Alligator people really do inhabit our swamps. They speak gator language, swap gator tales, and collect gator memorabilia. They cook gator chili and barbecue gator ribs. And they keep gators, enormous scaled pets with names such as Rusty, Godzilla, and Rambo, with whom they've developed a deep-swamp symbiosis.
- You're here to see a 98-pound/44-kilo, five foot three/1.6-metre, 22 year old girl wrestle a 120 pound/54-kilo, seven-foot/2.1-metre, 8 year old alligator
- "Lazy," in fact, is what Freer named the 26-year-old gator who lived in his living room for some years. "They make about as good of pets as snakes," he says. "A gator will come over and lay down next to you and open his mouth to tell you to feed him. But they all have different personalities. Some are really ornery." - American naturalist William Bartram, who describes in his 1794 tale of a boating trip "a huge alligator emerging upright on my lee quarter, belching water and smoke that fell upon me like a hurricane."
- Lindsey Hord is the Statewide Nuisance Alligator Coordinator for the Florida Wildlife Commission, among other titles; one of his jobs is to oversee the legal trapping of 12,000 or so nuisance gators annually. "We have 300 drowning deaths in Florida every year," he explains, patiently reciting a comparative statistic he has well memorized. "More people in this state are killed by vending machines than by alligators." http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2008-01-10/news/the-gator-people/ 10 January 08 Alligator revels in new digs At area humane society
After finding out that nearby zoos are 'full of gators' and did not have room for their adopted critter, the Pasadena Humane Society & SPCA has created a semi-permanent home for Tina Turner - a nearly 7-foot-long/2.1-metre American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis).
In May, Tina was given an extra 15 square feet/4.5-sq-metres of crawl space in her now-150-square-foot enclosure. Along with the additional room, she got a new, intricately designed stone waterfall that circulates water into her once-stagnant pond.
Tina came to the local facility in 1998, along with a couple of hedgehogs. Their original home, a traveling wildlife education show, went bust. http://www.cnjonline.com/news/wally_24992___article.html/pool_zoo.html 09 January 08 How Australia's pet crocs become pest crocs Some owners set them loose instead of bringing them to crocodile refuges. But the pet trade helps wild crocs, too.
An item pretty much along the lines of the title ...
Customers for the 50 or so crocodiles that are sold to the public annually from Crocodylus Park, a crocodile reserve just outside Darwin in the Northern Territory, come from all across Australia - New South Wales and Victoria as well as within the state. That may also explain the reluctance to return them when they grow up - some owners would have to travel long distances to do that. But most of the problem is in the Northern Territory, which is where Crocodylus is located. People who should return them may just be lazy.
Anyone with a permit (and it's not hard to get one for a baby crocodile) can buy a foot-long crocodile from a pet shop for around A$300 (US$262). But when it comes to returning the pets to the shops or the crocodile farms that abound, owners (including retired couples, parents, and college students) often get lazy. http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0109/p15s01-lign.html 08 January 08 Burberry's £13,000 Warrior handbag
With a £13,000 ($25,450 US) price tag, Burberry's alligator skin Warrior handbag may well be the ultimate in "arm-candy".
The luxury British heritage brand says demand for its high-end creations has never been stronger and handbags now account for 31 per cent of the brand's sales. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/08/nburberry108.xml
08 January 07 Conservation group offers revealing Report of mass Gharial mortality
The Indian Gharial isn't getting a break.
You've read summaries of media coverage of the multiple Gharial deaths of Indian Gharials (Gavialis gangeticus) which occurred - and continue - in the National Chambal Sanctuary in India.
The Gharial Conservation Alliance (GCA), conducting its own investigation, is monitoring the situation beyond the preliminary report submitted by the Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IRVI) about three weeks ago. The first observation by the IVRI that the reptiles may have died of heavy metals contamination is being dismissed since the presence of the metals was not high enough to cause mortality.
Read the revealing new report by GCA, here. - I.D.
07 January 08 Pet alligator saved in Pa. blaze
In West Wyoming, Pennsylvania, ‘Fat Boy’, a four-foot/1.2 metre-long alligator was saved from a house fire when his owner and the local fire chief rescued him from his enclosure … “(the owner) cut the lock to the cage and (the Chief) grabbed the alligator and wrapped it in a blanket.”
“(Firefighters)
said the (pool) water was near the boiling point”
http://www.timesleader.com/news/20080105_05gatorfire_ed_ART.html
04 January 08 Brazil's rare alligators 'stolen'
Police in Brazil are investigating the disappearance of seven rare albino alligators from a university zoo in the western state of Mato Grosso.
The two-year old animals, said by officials to be worth around $10,000 (£5,070) each, have no skin pigment and their eyes are a distinctive pink.
Police say the rarity of the
alligator will make the investigation difficult as the
people involved in the illegal trading of such rare species
are very secretive.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7170946.stm Filhotes raros de jacarés são furtados
http://www.correiodabahia.com.br/poder/noticia.asp?codigo=144916
A Polícia Federal requisitou a lista
de nomes e endereços de todos os funcionários do zoológico
da Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso (UFMT), de onde foram
roubados sete filhotes de jacarés albinos.
http://www.diariodecuiaba.com.br/detalhe.php?cod=306446 Gharial deaths: Infection possible, tests on
The most recent press from Lucknow, India reports that it could have been a protozoan infection that killed 53 ghariyals (the Indian Gharial, Gavialis gangeticus) at the National Chambal Sanctuary according to a yet to be tabled report of the Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI).
A viscera examination had revealed the presence of a large number of unicellular protozoan microbes in the liver and kidney of the dead reptiles.
Initial IVRI test
reports had pointed to the presence of heavy metals in the
livers. It was then assumed that the cold had caused the
deaths as the metals impaired the ghariyals’ liver
functions.
The IVRI head said a conclusive
opinion could only be formed after all test reports came in.
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Ghariyal-deaths-Infection-possible-tests-on/256903/
01 January 08 'Gator' the alligator safe In Washington State
"Gator" the rescued alligator is resting comfortably at the Thurston County Animal Services in Olympia, Washington basking under a heat lamp and dining on baked chicken that is lowered to it with barbecue tongs.
Owning an alligator is illegal in Washington, according to a law that went into effect in July that bars people from keeping dangerous wild animals.
However, people who owned exotic
animals prior to July were grandfathered in and may keep
those animals for the rest of the animals' lives.
http://www.theolympian.com/northwest/story/314737.html
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