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Captors stalked giant crocodile for three weeks


Experts who captured a giant crocodile stalked it for three weeks. The 21-foot, 600-kg seawater crocodile may very well be the largest one ever captured in the Philippines but there may be others just as enormous. Project director Ronald Nuer of the Bunawan Municipal Council said it took them 21 nights to snare the behemoth which, to the alarm of those who caught it, twice freed itself from the restraining ropes before it was finally tied down. Then it became “aggressive" three times. Nuer added that according to the Palawan Wildlife Conservation Center which helped capture the crocodile, it is a male.
Those who carefully constructed a frame around the reptile to restrain it had kept their eyes on each move of the crocodile’s tail and snout. Residents were relieved with the capture of the reptile but none more than Luciano Auxtero, who believes that it is the crocodile that ate his missing sister. “ Malaki ang paniniwala ko na kinain ng buwaya ang nawawala kong kapatid," said Auxtero. According to experts, capturing large crocodiles in the wild is justified when there are reports that these animals have attacked livestock or humans. Last July, in Rio Tuba in Palawan, snares were also used to capture a 19-foot crocodile believed to have killed fisherman Edwin Lucero. The crocodile injured one personnel of the Palawan Wildlife Rescue Center who was helping to put the reptile in a cage. In March 2009, in a different municipality of Agusan del Sur, a crocodile killed a child in a canoe by biting the child’s head off. Students brave the waters every weekday to cross another lake in Barangay Matila in Kabuntalan, Maguindanao, which is known as a crocodile habitat, to get to school.— Marlon Anthony Tonson/VS/HS/YA, GMA News

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