The Yangtze alligator, a creature that has been included among the most endangered species worldwide, will survive in the long term, according to Xie Wanshu, director of a Yangtze alligator reproduction center in east China's Anhui Province.
Xie made the announcement Tuesday, citing the fact that about 1, 500 Yangtze alligators have been born annually in recent years.
Regarded as a rare ``living fossil," the Yangtze alligator has lived on Earth for 230 million years, experts said, adding the creature was on the verge of extinction in the 1970s, when no more than 500 of them remained.
Covering an area of 100 ha near Xuancheng, the center was launched jointly by the then Chinese Ministry of Forestry and the Anhui provincial government in 1979.
At the start, it only accommodated 140 Yangtze alligators, said Xie. The center saw the first group of alligators born through artificial incubation in the year 1981.
Since 1986, the rates of hatchability and survival have both remained above 90 percent, and there are now more than 8,000 alligators being raised at the center.
Xie, an expert on alligators, said that, with a life expectancy ranging between 50 and 80 years, the Yangtze alligator becomes sexually mature at seven or eight years old, and each can lay 25 eggs at a time.
The eggs of the alligators raised in the center are hatched at around 33 degrees centigrade, adjusted artificially, Xie explained, saying that only after being exposed to warm sunshine for about two months can the wild ones be hatched.
He added that alligator eggs hatched slightly above 33 degrees would definitely be male, as those hatched below that temperature always turn out to be females.
The Anhui provincial government allocates 1.2 million Yuan (about US$ 145,000) a year to the center.
At present, the center is allowed to sell 400 alligators a year, using a special pricing method -- 100 Yuan for each centimeter. The marketing of artificially bred Yangtze alligators was approved at an international meeting on the trading of endangered species in March 1992.
The center has been developed into a multi-function park, and has so far received 300,000 visitors and scientists from all over the world, Xie added.
Including the Yangtze alligator, the Chinese government has so far put seven endangered species such as the giant panda, ibis and wild horse under tight protection to preserve them from extinction, environmental protection experts said.
In addition to a large number of wildlife reproduction and protection bases, 799 nature reserves have been set up in China, whose aggregated area accounts for seven percent of China's total, according to the experts.
(People's Daily 06/07/2001)
