Our really old animals

The National Museum of the Philippines will soon be the venue of an international conference on the neglected but important component of our endemic biodiversity ---the Philippine Crocodile.

This meeting is sponsored by the private sector and the academe.

Expected to attend are well known authorities on this species, both Filipinos and foreigners. It is about time that this meeting is held this year, 2007, for no conference of note on animals of ancient lineage has ever been held in the country during the past few years, in contrast to the numerous meetings, conferences and congresses on other aspects of Philippine biodiversity.

Many Filipinos are so prejudiced against crocodiles to the extent that the word "crocodile" has been associated with corruption and corrupt individuals. The print media is full of references to "crocodiles" in Philippine society. This bad reputation of these animals arises from a misunderstanding of these creatures. For example, it is assumed that all crocodiles feed on people.

This belief is contrary to scientific findings of herpetologists (amphibian and reptile specialists), who have documented only two species (both crocodiles) among the 22 or 23 living crocodilian species (alligators, caimans, crocodiles and gharials) in the world, are definitely man-eating. And they eat people only for good reasons from their own standpoint!

The vast majority feed on other animals in their habitats. One of the two man-eating species is the Indo-Pacific Crocodile, which is also found in the Philippines.

The other species of crocodile in the country, the Philippine Crocodile, our very own crocodile and truly Filipino like us, has never been seen or observed to feed on fellow Filipinos! In fact, I have received reports that the extirpated population of the Philippine Crocodile in southern Negros Island used to share its river habitat with local divers living in the vicinity of Pagatban River. These divers when spear-fishing in this river did not feel threatened by the crocodiles. Freshwater fish used to be a resource common to crocodiles and people in this particular area.

As one who has studied this species, I confirm that the feeding habits of the Philippine Crocodile include only smaller vertebrates and that this species is not aggressive in relation to humans. The co-existence of this crocodile with human communities in nature is a further indication of its non-aggressive behavior.

The Philippine Crocodile is now one of the most critically endangered species in the world because of over-hunting as well as the lack of conservation effort on the part of government authorities and our people in general.

Only pockets of small populations exist in the wild on the islands of Luzon and Mindanao in contrast to its wide historical distribution, which includes several other islands.

As a result of the near extirpation of this valuable species, our country has lost the ecological services performed by crocodiles. One of these is in related to the ecological position of crocodiles in nature, being a keystone species that determines structure and function of natural communities.

In this connection, the Philippine Crocodile and the Indo-Pacific Crocodile were largely responsible for the high productivity of mountain streams and river systems resulting, for example, in the abundance of fish.

Although we are no longer able to demonstrate this phenomenon, the work of a German scientist in the Amazon River tributaries amply demonstrates this direct connection when he showed that when the caiman population was reduced, the fish abundance was also diminished, making life harder for the local people.

What the forthcoming conference can do is develop strategies to change the attitudes of people toward crocodiles, particularly the Philippine Crocodile. It is hoped that government will learn lessons from the past and increase effort at protection and management of the populations remaining in the wild as well as those in the hands of the private sector.

One of the conservation activities would be to release captive-bred individuals to the wild in areas where the original or local populations no longer exist.

This way, the Philippine Crocodile as a species that evolved together with the dinosaurs from a reptilian stock during the past 200 million years will be saved from imminent extinction. And also, we can show to the world that we Filipinos appreciate things that are ancient and are legacies from the past, just as we render homage to our own human ancestors.* -