A Thai crocodile breeder nicknamed “Crocodile X” said he killed more than a hundred critically endangered reptiles to prevent them from escaping after a typhoon damaged their enclosure.
Natthapak Khumkad, 37, who runs a crocodile farm in Lamphun, northern Thailand, said he struggled to find a new home for his Siamese crocodiles when he realized a wall protecting their enclosure was in danger of collapsing. But nowhere was big or safe enough to contain the crocodiles, some of which were up to 4 meters long.
To stop the crocodiles from getting loose in the local community, Natthapak said, he slaughtered 125 of them on September 22.
“I had to make the most difficult decision of my life: to kill them all,” said the CNN . “My family and I discussed if the wall fell, the damage to people’s lives would be much greater than we can control. This would involve people’s lives and public safety.”
Typhoon Yagi, Asia’s most powerful storm this year, swept across southern China and Southeast Asia this month, leaving a trail of destruction with heavy rain and strong winds. Torrential rains flooded northern Thailand, submerging homes and riverside villages, killing at least nine people.
Storms like Yagi are “getting stronger due to climate change, particularly as warmer ocean waters provide more energy to power the storms, leading to increased wind speeds and more intense rainfall,” said Benjamin Horton, director from the Singapore Earth Observatory.
Natural disasters, including typhoons, pose a range of threats to wildlife, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Floods can leave animals trapped, in danger of drowning or separated from their owners or families.
Rain and strong winds can also seriously damage animal habitats and shelters. In 2022, Hurricane Ian hit Florida and destroyed the Little Bear Sanctuary in Punta Gorda, leaving 200 animals including cows, horses, donkeys, pigs and birds without shelter.
The risk of natural disasters to animals only increases as human-caused climate change makes extreme weather events more frequent and volatile.
Natthapak said his farm has been open for 17 years and has survived every rainy season until this year, when days of heavy rain eroded the walls of the crocodile tank.
“I had to make a decision in less than 24 hours when I saw that the erosion was progressing quickly,” said Natthapak, adding that he electrocuted the crocodiles to kill them.
Pornthip Nualanong, head of Lamphun’s fisheries office, said Natthapak informed his office when heavy rains began threatening the farm.
Killing the crocodiles “was a brave and responsible decision, as if any of these adult crocodiles were loose in nearby rice fields, it would pose (a serious risk to) public safety,” she said.
Among the dead crocodiles was one named Ai Harn, the oldest male breeder and leader of the pack, measuring 4 meters in length.
Videos showed an excavator removing the bodies of the crocodiles.
Siamese crocodiles are critically endangered but are widely sold and bred in Thailand.
Crocodile farming is a lucrative industry in the country, with about 1,100 registered commercial farms generating between 6 billion and 7 billion Thai baht ($215 million) in revenue annually, Pornthip said.
They were once found throughout much of Southeast Asia, but hunting and large-scale farming have drastically diminished the Siamese crocodile population in the wild, with some estimates putting it at just a few hundred.
Earlier this year, 60 Siamese crocodile eggs hatched in Cambodia, the largest breeding event recorded for the species this century.
Natthapak said his family’s original business was selling roasted piglets and calves, but when he realized how much waste he had left, he decided to use it to feed crocodiles. The family purchased five crocodiles and the number has grown in the nearly two decades since.
The farm supplies crocodile skins to leather factories, sells frozen meat in Thailand and exports dried crocodile meat to Hong Kong.
Natthapak, or Crocodile X, advertises his family’s business in eclectic videos where he is seen performing acrobatics with the reptiles. In a video shared with CNN Natthapak lies in a bathtub as dozens of baby crocodiles walk over him.
He also has 500 baby crocodiles, which are between 30 and 120 centimeters long.
This content was originally published in Thai breeder kills more than a hundred crocodiles after typhoon damages shelter on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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