麻豆传媒

THE Chinese alligator is set to become the first crocodilian species to die
out in recent history. 鈥淭his is a species literally on the edge of extinction,鈥�
says John Thorbjarnarson of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. He
and his team used nocturnal counts and interviews with local people to estimate
the number of individuals in the alligator鈥檚 last stronghold鈥攁 reserve in
Anhui province, eastern China (Biological Conservation, vol 103, p 93).
They reckon that there are fewer than 130 individuals in the wild and that
numbers are falling by 4 to 6 per cent per year. Thorbjarnarson puts the crisis
down to agricultural expansion, which is destroying the alligator鈥檚 wetland
habitat.