Friday, March 23, 2007

Good news for the American crocodile

The American crocodile has become a conservation success story. The continent's largest reptile (well, maybe the largest - there's an old record of an alligator allegedly reaching 19 feet, 2 inches) has been reclassified from "endangered" to "threatened."
COMMENT: An impressive 12-foot specimen was once captured near a construction area I was working on next to the Indian River at Vero Beach, FL. The reptile was kept alive in a covered pool pending a proper return to the wild. The animal got away and was never found again, earning it the name "Houdini." At that point, in 1976, there were as few as 300 of these animals in Florida. There are now an estimated 2,000.

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