By Tracey Eaton. Dallas Morning News.
The Seattle Times. Sunday, July
08, 2001 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific
ISLA DE JUVENTUD, Cuba - Damarys Lopez walked along a dirt path next to a
wobbly chain-link fence. On the other side, just a few feet away, was a rare and
extremely aggressive pearly crocodile, capable of crushing a turtle - or a human
limb - with a single bite.
Lopez, who has a kinship of sorts with these primitive beasts, wasn't fazed.
"I love these animals," said Lopez, 28, a rising star among Cuba's
crocodile caretakers. "I don't want them to go the way of the dinosaur, and
that's why I work to protect them."
Cuba's native pearly crocodile nearly disappeared in the 1950s. But with
little more than rowboats, flashlights and homemade mosquito repellent, Cuban
biologists managed to bring it back from the brink of extinction.
"The Cubans are doing a fabulous job," said James Perran Ross, a
Florida zoologist and one of the leading authorities on pearly crocodiles. "They've
reinvented the wheel despite a lack of resources and information from the
outside world - and their wheel works perfectly well."
The little-known tale of the pearly crocodile is one of duct tape, baling
wire and human ingenuity, scientific study and U.S.-Cuban academic cooperation.
The pearly crocodile, a.k.a. Crocodylus rhombifer, is found in the Zapata
Swamp in southwestern Cuba and on Isla de Juventud, to the southeast.
The animal, one of the world's 23 surviving crocodilian species, was
identified and named in 1807. It once roamed the Bahamas and Cayman Islands but
became extinct there.
By the early 1990s, some experts thought that the species had vanished or
very nearly disappeared, and the crocodile was ranked fourth on the list of the
world's most-endangered species.
Back then, U.S. and Cuban crocodile experts had no contact with each other.
That changed when Ross and other crocodile experts first journeyed to Cuba
in 1991. What they found startled them. With no outside help, the Cubans had
tagged more than 800 rare crocodiles at Zapata Swamp. No easy task, since some
had mixed with non-native species.
Roberto Rodriguez Soberon, Cuba's top crocodile man at the Ministry of
Agriculture, later told writer Steve Hendrix: "We didn't know the first
thing about captive breeding. I had one article on breeding, but it was on fax
paper. I didn't know that fax paper fades over time until I went to read it."
Despite the lack of information, Soberon and other Cuban specialists have
shown that rare species can be rescued in less affluent, less developed nations,
experts say.
Ross, a native Australian, is a zoologist for the Florida Museum of Natural
History. He is also a leader of the 350-member Crocodile Specialist Group, which
touts itself as "a worldwide network of biologists, wildlife managers,
government officials ... farmers, traders" and others conserving
alligators, crocodiles and caimans.
He helped the Cubans secure $50,000 in Swiss funding for their conservation
efforts, but said they still lack resources.
Some of their crocodile enclosures, for instance, are flimsy. And in the
early 1990s, far too many pearly crocodiles captured in southwestern Cuba were
escaping. So Ross suggested that they adjust their strategy: Instead of trying
to fence in the crocs, reintroduce them into the wild.
That strategy soon became "one of the best crocodile-reintroduction
programs in the world," Ross said.
The pearly crocodile, numbering in the thousands, is still considered
endangered. And because its territory is so small, it is vulnerable. A
hurricane, offshore-oil drilling or the draining of swampland could devastate
the population.
Cuban specialists hope the pearly population will continue to grow and move
off the endangered list. At that point, they hope to begin selling crocodile
skins.
Ross said he supports that idea but says the Cubans aren't there yet: The
sample crocodile skins he has seen have been of poor quality.
Cuban crocodiles usually grow to more than 11 feet and have been known to
reach more than 16 feet. They are smaller than the American crocodile, but when
the two crocs are kept together, the Cuban variety is almost always the dominant
species, University of Florida specialists say.
The crocodile's yellow and black coloring led to its "pearly"
nickname. The crocs have large, powerful legs and have been known to jump from
the water to snatch prey from tree branches.
Lopez, the Cuban biologist, sometimes spends 18 to 20 days at a time
studying the animals.
"You really don't have much protection from the crocodile," she
said. "You sit in a boat and use a flashlight to count them. One swipe of
its tail and a crocodile could easily tip over your boat."
Copyright © 2001 The Seattle Times Company | 
