Costa Rica is nature’s theater where the crocodile is just one of many where one-day tourism loves its production of jagged, snaring teeth and prehistoric features. And crocodile attacks are considered one of the most gruesome. With that said, crocodiles annually attract thousands of tourists on the river Tárcoles where they come out of the bridges or board boats or display their shows as Costa Rica’s crocodile man does. Crocodile have also been the recent threat to drug smugglers. The Pacific coast from Puntarenas all the way to Esterillos is full of huge crocodiles during the mating season.
However, this prehistoric production may be threatened.
According to a scientific study released on August 8, 2010, Global warming has caused the birth of more males than females crocodiles in the rivers of Costa Rica, which could jeopardize the survival of the species in the next two decades.
“The assumption is that the birth of a greater number of males is related to the temperature higher still because of climate change and direct sunshine,” reports the newspaper La Nacion, which publishes some of this study by the Costa Rican biologist Juan Rafael Bolaños, a Crocodilian Biologist from the University of Costa Rica.
More males are born than females a recent study shows
“In crocodiles, the temperature recorded in the nest determines the sex of the brood. When the incubation temperature is about 28 degrees Celsius are born female, about 32 degrees they are males,” the paper said. The study was conducted using populations of crocodiles on a dozen rivers, all located in the Pacific area of Costa Rica.
“This does not mean they will disappear entirely. But sometimes there are only three females to spawn in the river and the population of crocodiles is only a tenth of what it is now,” says biologist Juan Rafael Bolaños, who plans to publish the findings of its study in 2011.
However, Global warming may be one problem, but pollution may be another.
The Tárcoles River in Costa Rica originates on the southern slopes of the Cordillera Central volcanic range and flows in a south-westerly direction to the Gulf of Nicoya. The river is 111 km long and its watershed covers an area of 2,121 km which encompasses around 50% of the country’s population. It is said that the Tarcoles River has one of the highest populations of crocodiles in the entire world, 25 crocodiles per square kilometer. Much of the time these large reptiles can be spotted swimming through the river or sunbathing along the banks.
The river [and others that flow to the Pacific and Caribbean] is the most contaminated river in Costa Rica, carrying much of the sewage from the central towns and cities as other rivers are. The river’s watershed drains approximately 67% of Costa Rica’s untreated organic and industrial waste and is considered the most contaminated river basin in the country. It was also affected by a leak of 400 thousand liters of diesel fuel by the state-owned Costa Rican Petroleum Refinery in 2000 which further damaged the ecology of the river and its immediate surroundings and could be the main cause of the sagging female population.
In Florida, eco-studies showed, pollution was next to poaching for the declined of this reptile population. Both Florida and Costa Rica, the crocodile is a protected creature.
The crocodile exists along both coasts. Even if experts claim that the saltwater croc of Southeast Asia, Africa’s Nile crocodile and the American alligator — are considered man-killers, it’s still a wise idea to check with locals or park rangers before swimming in coastal estuaries and lagoons as some of the drug smugglers have found out. About one person a year is attacked, bitten, or killed in Costa Rica by a crocodile.
people are stupid