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THE Chinese alligator is set to become the first crocodilian species to die
out in recent history. “This is a species literally on the edge of extinction,”
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’s last stronghold—a 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.…