A tiny snout poked out to widen the crack of the slowly shattering eggshell. The Siamese crocodile was taking its time, lagging others that had already wriggled out, chirping, into the sand. Adults can be up to 4 meters (13 feet) long and weigh up to 350 kilograms (770 pounds).
They have few natural predators. But these hatchlings — each roughly the size of a New York hotdog — are vulnerable and their chorus of shrill calls was a signal for mothers to protect them and for stragglers to catch up. Hor Vichet, a zookeeper at the nonprofit Fauna and Flora’s breeding center for the critically endangered reptiles in Cambodia’s Phnom Tamao, broke the rest of the shell.
“It’s time to go into the world,” he said. Siamese crocodiles are making an unlikely comeback. Once widespread across Southeast Asia, demand for leather made from their skins decimated wild populations in the last century.
Thousands were hunted or captured for breeding at farms. By the late nineties, they were thought to be extinct. A critically endangered crocodile species, once thought extinct in its Cambodian habitat, is clawing its way back thanks to painstaking conservation work.
The hatching of clutches of critically endangered Siamese crocodiles is an unlikely comeback, aided by an even unlikelier ally. Crocodile farmers who had nearly hunted the species to extinction in the first place now play a vital role in providing purebred reptiles for captive breeding. But a 2000 survey in the Cardamom Mou.
