US TV snares NT croc wrestler - ntnews.com.au

20 June 2011

A BLOKE who got his first outback television exposure in the Territory is about to become a crocodile-wrestling international TV star.

Matthew Wright, based on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland has signed with Nat Geo Wild - National Geographic's US-based wildlife channel.

That would mean being in 90 million homes in 90 countries in 37 languages.

His previous fame was a single appearance on Channel 7 in 2009 showing him catching a 5.6m, 850kg crocodile in the NT.

The male croc was trapped on La Belle cattle station, about 200km southwest of Darwin.

Wright was a helicopter pilot paid to relocate rogue crocs in the Top End.

Although he spent time in various places including Cairns, Papua New Guinea and south of Adelaide, Wright headed to the Territory after school.

While he worked at Kings Canyon Resort in Watarrka National Park, he came to the attention of the local parks and wildlife staff for having "a few snakes and scorpions" in his room.

After various jobs he started mustering cattle by helicopter then wildlife relocation, which was where he came to the attention of Channel 7.

National Geographic Channel's head Geoff Daniels described him as a "wild-world action hero".

"He's like the Lone Ranger, riding in to save people and animals in distress but his horse is a helicopter and he uses a rope instead of a gun"

>>Another day in the office for Matt Wright. PICTURE: NAT GEO (National Geographic's wildlife channel)

Gator baiters line up quickly for thrill of hunt -news-press.com

19 June 2011

It’s the closest anyone ever will get to Jurassic Park.

Almost 6,000 thrill seekers have surrendered $272 each — out-of-state residents pay $1,022 — to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission for a license to kill Alligator mississippiensis, once known to Spanish explorers as “el lagarto,” the lizard.

There’s a two-alligator-per-person limit and applicants need to hurry.

South Florida permits disappeared quickly. Go to myfwc.com and follow the links to the statewide alligator harvest program to learn more.

Worldwide recession and jobless-recovery notwithstanding, the annual statewide hunt remains popular, said commission wildlife biologist Steve Stiegler.“The response has been good this year,” he said.

Hunted to near extinction, alligators landed on the endangered species list in 1967. They rebounded and were downgraded to threatened in 1987. Rough estimates put the Florida population at 1.3 million.

Alligators appear in all 67 Florida counties, from lakes and rivers and swamps to the occasional golf course, downtown retention pond or suburban swale.

The alligator ranges from Oklahoma and Arkansas to North Carolina and males can grow longer than 14 feet. The Florida record, 14 feet, 31⁄2 inches, was bagged last year on Lake Washington in Brevard County. Captive alligators have lived for 75 years.

They are considered reptiles, but are more closely related to birds and dinosaurs. They have devastating jaws that can crack turtle shells like peanuts. Their muscular tail can land a blow like a 2-by-4 and swamp a canoe.

They are hunted mostly at night, when their avian eyes glow red and menacing just above the water’s surface.

Even after fighting on a line for more than hour, the big ones can be hard to kill.

Some hunters have learned the hard way not to bother with small-caliber ammunition.

“You can actually bounce a .22 off of a gator’s head,” said Pete Kinnamon, a veteran outdoorsman from Lakeland who for 26 years held a license as a nuisance alligator trapper.

A common way to deliver the coup de grace is with a bang stick. The long metal rod has a cylinder at one end that holds a projectile. The firing pin activates when the rod is jammed against the alligator’s skull.

Kinnamon’s homemade bang stick holds a .357 magnum or .44 magnum shell. The user gets one shot before having to reload.

“When you’re standing in the water reeling him in and he’s coming between your legs, you want to get him the first time,” Kinnamon said.

Kinnamon, 64, has long since given up the hunt. Almost every encounter ended predictably and he never suffered a serious injury.

But alligators started to change and he wondered how long his luck would hold. As their habitat shrank and human contact became more common, alligators grew bolder, Kinnamon said.

“They started hunting me,” he said. “They’ve gotten to where they just don’t have a fear of people.”

These days, Kinnamon has gone into the tanning business and hawks alligator products from his website.

Hide prices collapsed two to three years ago with the onset of the recession. Exclusive retailers, the kind who sell jewel-encrusted alligator purses for $190,000 and men’s full-length alligator leather coats for $150,000, demand flawless hides and that usually means farm raised.

The price of wild hides plunged from $55 or more per foot to $15 or less.

Lane Stephens, a lobbyist who also holds the nuisance trapping license for Gadsden County, said the point is the thrill of the hunt.

“A lot of it is the chase and a lot of slow time,” he said. “But when you get a 200-pound or 300-pound gator on the line, and it flips its tail and splashes you and you get soaking wet, it gets exciting pretty quick.”

Passenger accepts check for broken eggs - audigazette.com.sa

19 June 2011

A Saudi Arabian Airlines passenger returning to the Kingdom from Singapore who had his cargo of crocodile and snake eggs destroyed by clumsy baggage handlers has been compensated for his loss with SR519 and 16 halala.

Radhwan Mardad told Okaz/Saudi Gazette he had accepted the check payment from Saudi Airlines for the loss of the four snake eggs and two crocodile eggs that were accidentally destroyed at Madina International Airport a month ago.

“I will not be seeking any compensation for losses such as travel and transport expenses and finding salesmen abroad,” he said. “I went to Singapore purely for purposes of tourism and not specifically to buy the eggs.”

Nine-year-old wrestles alligator - telegraph.co.uk

17 June 2011

Samantha Young is nine-years-old and has been wrestling eight-foot deadly reptiles since she was six.

Samantha's parents, Jay and Erin Young, own the Colorado Gators Reptile Park in the US and live surrounded by 350 of the beasts on their 12-acre farm.

"I have been wrestling alligators since I was six," Samantha said. "I was a bit scared at first but my dad was there and he always knows what to do with them."

"It's all about getting your balance and position on top of the gator's back so that you can control its mouth and neck," she added.

The Youngs began their alligator collection in 1987 and offer £70 classes to members of the public on how to tackle the predators.

"Samantha is very proficient with the gators and wrestles the size of alligator that we involve the public with," her father said.

Venezuela's wildlife conservation sees mixed results - bbc.co.uk

13 June 2011

A privately-run breeding programme is aiming to conserve the Orinoco Crocodile

Young crocodiles cry plaintively for their mother as they are hooked in a trap and pulled, splashing frantically, from the water.

But their mother is nowhere to be seen.

These one-year-old Orinoco Crocodiles are part of a captive breeding programme designed to put the brakes on their slide towards extinction.

The Orinoco Crocodile (Crocodylus intermedius ) is the biggest in South America, present only in Venezuela and Colombia.

Researchers measure population by the number of adult females and say there are now around 100 in Venezuela, far fewer in Colombia.

"In the 1930s and 1940s they were over-exploited for their skin," said Omar Hernandez, director of Venezuela's Science Development Foundation.

"Now people are eating these crocodiles, they're hunting them for their meat."

The breeding programme, which each year sees around 200 young crocodiles released into the rivers of Venezuela's Llanos, or Great Plains, takes place on a private reserve about six hours drive from the capital Caracas.

Stalled programmes?

Over the years, state-run national parks have proved ineffective at preserving wildlife and the task fell to private ranchers who kept reserves and created ecotourism lodges.

The challenge is for productive farming to co-exist with conservation programmes

But now these reserves are an endangered species themselves.

Since 2006, three of the four farms which hosted biological research programmes have been expropriated by President Hugo Chavez's government, to the dismay of environmentalists.

"There is no way of knowing what is going on inside those farms now," says Mr Hernandez.

"At El Frio ranch, there was a crocodile breeding programme but we hear it is now closed and we don't know what is happening."

The expropriation of El Frio ranch was controversial. One of the biggest farms in the country, covering more than 60,000 hectares (nearly 150,000 acres), it was taken over by government troops in 2008.

It now goes by a different name - the Marisela Socialist Production Company.

Agricultural production has diversified on this ranch, officials say

Large farms were traditionally the property of foreign investors or wealthy Venezuelan dynasties, often remaining in the hands of the same family for years.My requests for permission to visit the ranch went unanswered by the Ministry of Agriculture but the government says the site, once a huge cattle ranch, now produces rice, beans, sorghum and maize as well as meat.

That made them a natural target for President Chavez and his socialist Bolivarian Revolution which has a policy of redistribution of wealth.

Preservation

There are no official figures on how much agricultural land has been expropriated since 2005. Some estimates put it at about 2m hectares (nearly 5m acres).

But those who have benefited are grateful.

"Thanks to God, the revolution and Hugo Chavez, we grow our own maize, rice, oranges and papaya," said Miguel Angel Tovar, a former shoe shop assistant who was given 15 hectares of land after the government expropriated a large cattle ranch from the British company The Vestey Group.

El Cedral, a 53,000 hectare ranch, keeps 90% of its land as a nature reserve while still raising cattle for meat and buffalo for dairy products.And at another expropriated farm, ecological programmes are continuing.

Its ecotourism lodge remains open and continues to attract bird watchers who come to see the more than 300 species found at the ranch.

"Food production here is done in a responsible way. The land isn't given over to crops, the cows are not injected with steroids, they eat grass, it's very natural," says local guide Ramon Arbuja.

Wildlife conservation: Challenges for private and state landowners

Attempting to show that preservation and production can live side by side, El Cedral is running a pilot programme alongside the Vietnamese government to investigate the use of fish as a pest control in rice paddies.

The approach at El Cedral seems to suggest that all is not lost for the wildlife of Los Llanos, but neither is its future guaranteed.

Crocodiles in Cheshire trained to obey commands - bbc.co.uk

13 June 2011

Crocodiles at an aquarium in Cheshire have been trained to obey the commands of their keepers.

The Blue Planet Aquarium in Ellesmere Port said the two reptiles could open and close their mouths and hold out their front legs on demand.

The male and female cuvier's dwarf caimans have also been taught to respond to their names, to stay still and to return to the water, it added.

The training programme is based on a similar scheme in India.

Blue Planet Aquarium's Adam Mitchell said: "We are one of the very few places in the world that have trained our crocodilians. Not a lot of people do it.

Target stick

"It enables us to move them and put them in transport crates and do medical procedures without having to restrain them, which would potentially stress them out.

"Plus handling a dangerous animal can also be dangerous for us."

The crocodiles, a male called Paleo and a female called Suchus, have been trained using a target stick which they associate with food.

"It is more or less the same thing that you would do with a domestic dog," Mr Mitchell explained.

"You associate a behaviour with a reward and that's exactly what we are doing with these guys.

"They will follow the target wherever it goes, so we can safely move them, say into a box."

The training, which is based on a programme at the Madras Crocodile Trust in India, means the crocodiles can be examined without having to be handled.

"The stay stick enables us to do specific medical procedures such as check their feet and check underneath their tail.

"I also make them stand up on their hind legs, which does sound like a bit of a circus trick, but it is the best way to check there are no wounds on their undersides."

The cuvier's dwarf caimans are the smallest of the crocodilian species, growing to between 1.2m and 1.5m in length and can live to 40 years or more.

They are found throughout South America in freshwater habitats like rivers, flooded forests and lakes.

Robert Irwin fearless like his dad - sunshinecoastdaily.com.au

12 June 2011

SITTING comfortably like a normal seven-year-old would on a seesaw, Robert Irwin wasn't fazed by the 600kg beast underneath him.

Not a strand of his signature blond bob moved out of place as he helped wrestle the prehistoric reptile.

It was the first time Agro the croc had been caught since it was brought to Australia Zoo in 1988.

Twenty-three years ago it was Robert's late father, Steve Irwin, who wrangled the reptile by himself in North Queensland, filming the entire thing with a sole camera atop a tripod.

Yesterday, as the Irwins moved Agro to a new enclosure, Robert told a film crew: “I now know why my dad called him Agro!”

But Robert wasn't scared at all.

“Ah, no, they're just awesome,” he said.

“Well, you've actually got to hold the tail down so it doesn't actually move, because if the tail arches around that means he's getting ready to death roll.

“And if he death rolls around then you're in pretty big trouble.”

With mum Terri at the snout of the beast and sister Bindi holding his hand before they jumped on, Robert was in good company.

The Irwins, with Steve's best friend Wes Mannion and zoo staff, shifted Agro to a new home in front of a crowd of more than 100 yesterday.

As vets measured, tested and x-rayed the croc, Robert and Bindi joined their mum and Wes at the taped-up mouth for a normal Irwin family photo.

Smiling widely to show the gap left by two missing front teeth, Robert looked right at home on the “beautiful” scaly beast.

“It is amazing to be laying on top of a modern day dinosaur,” he told the Daily afterwards.

“They're related to an archosaur, which is really cool.”

Agro, often referred to as Steve's arch nemesis, grunted and rolled violently as he was pinned before 27 men finally carried him out of the enclosure in a metal box.