Efforts to protect and breed endangered Chinese crocodilian are to
be intensified through international cooperation, forestry chiefs
pledged Sunday.
“It is of vital importance for China to enhance the protection and
management of crocodilian resources after indigenous Chinese
alligators narrowly escaped extinction through the state’s
protection and conservation efforts since 1983,” a deputy director
of the State Forestry Administration (SFA) said.
Addressing an international workshop on captive breeding and
commercial management of crocodiles, Ma Fu told more than 80
officials and experts that China will further push forwards the
protection, growth and sustainable use of crocodile resources
through links with other countries.
The workshop included some 40 foreign scholars from the Crocodile
Specialist Group of the International Union of Conservation of
Nature (IUCN) - the largest of its kind in the world.
Since the early 1980s, China has initiated a special program to
save the Chinese alligator by establishing a nature reserve with a
breeding and research center in Wuhu, east China’s Anhui
Province.
The population of Chinese alligators bred in captivity has surged
to more than 10,000 with more than 1,500 individuals being reared
annually.
In
the Anhui center, the reptiles are living in a 433-square-km nature
reserve which is their only protection zone in the country, said
Wang Chaolin, director of the Chinese Alligator Breeding Research
Center.
So
far, more than 80 Chinese alligators have been returned to the wild
with a survival rate of about 50 percent. The center has set aside
four zones near the reserve as future homes for reptiles.
It
has been conducting a series of research programs on the returned
alligators. Zoological experts are also working to improve
awareness on the need to protect Chinese alligators.
Twenty years ago there were fewer than 300 Chinese alligators
remaining in the wild, mainly in Anhui and Zhejiang provinces.
To
ensure a gradual and sustainable growth of the population of
crocodilian, China has also tightened its control over the
introduction, breeding and wise use of exotic crocodilian with
higher economic values.
The skin of the crocodile is highly valued for its deluxe leather,
and the extract from the musk glands is used in the manufacture of
perfumes.
Due to over-hunting, most of the world’s existing 20 species of
crocodilian, including Chinese alligators, are considered
endangered species
(China
Daily 09/03/2001)