Crocodiles will often pull their prey into the water and drown them before they begin to eat. They use their huge jaws to rip the meat off of their prey and then they gulp it down.
However, in recent years it is not the crocodile that has been winning the battle for life.
Bringing crocodiless back from the edge of extinction and returning them to former abundance is one of the true success stories in international wildlife conservation, a success story that owes much of its credit to the Crocodile Specialist Group (CSG), an international network of people working to conserve the world's 23 species of crocodilians.
In the past, crocodilians were considered threats to humans and livestock. They were vermin to be eliminated. Some species were hunted for their hides with little effort to conserve them. Countries that purchased the hides to turn them into high fashion leather products did not care that they were being over-exploited in the countries that produced the hides. Illegal hunting, poaching, and smuggling was rampant. By 1971, all the alligators, crocodiles, caimans, and gharials were endangered, threatened, or declining in numbers. The CSG reversed the decline and endangerment of two-thirds of the world's crocodilians.
In only 25 short years, 16 of the 23 existing species have been returned to abundance. This level of conservation success has not been achieved with primates, not with whales, not with spotted cats, not with parrots and macaws, nor with any other major group of wildlife. And the success continues.
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