{"id":176083,"date":"2018-08-10T04:42:21","date_gmt":"2018-08-10T08:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=176083"},"modified":"2018-08-10T04:42:21","modified_gmt":"2018-08-10T08:42:21","slug":"israel-faces-crocodile-conundrum-stranded-reptiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/08\/10\/israel-faces-crocodile-conundrum-stranded-reptiles\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel faces crocodile conundrum with stranded reptiles"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
An Israeli businessman appears to have bitten off more than he can chew with plans for a crocodile farm in a West Bank settlement. (File Photo<\/a>: Nemodus photos\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An Israeli businessman appears to have bitten off more than he can chew with plans for a\u00a0crocodile\u00a0farm in a West Bank settlement.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of crocodiles have been stranded at the farm in a remote spot in the Jordan Valley \u2014 left behind by a pair of failed business ventures.<\/p>\n

The crocodiles were brought to the settlement of Petzael in the mid-1990s as a tourist attraction. Ensuing Israeli-Palestinian violence kept visitors away, prompting the crocodiles’ purchase by entrepreneur Gadi Biton, who hoped to sell them for their skin.<\/p>\n

But his venture flopped after\u00a0Israel\u00a0passed a law in 2012 defining the\u00a0crocodile\u00a0as a protected animal, and banning raising the animals for sale as meat or merchandise. Multiple attempts to sell them abroad have failed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found ourselves with hundreds of crocodiles in this farm that no one knows what to do with,\u201d said David Elhayani, head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council. A lone worker feeds the animals dead chickens once every eight days.<\/p>\n

Dozens of the crocodiles lazed recently on the sun-baked shores of a lagoon on the property, their jaws ajar, revealing menacing teeth.<\/p>\n

The animals have become a pain for the owner, the region and\u00a0Israel.\u00a0Dozens of crocodiles have escaped on two occasions, including once when 70 flew the coop only to be found after a three-day croc-hunt. The reptiles, which can live well into their 70s, are also reproducing. Their numbers are expected to grow to the thousands in the coming years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t want to think of what will happen if a\u00a0crocodile\u00a0manages to escape and reaches the Jordan River, and then we’ll have an international incident,\u201d Elhayani said. \u201cMaybe then someone will wake up and find a quick solution to this problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biton, who declined to speak to The Associated Press, has attempted to resettle the crocodiles in Cyprus, but numerous attempts to do so have failed because of opposition by residents there.<\/p>\n

COGAT, the Israeli defence body that administers civilian affairs in the West Bank, said it is working to find a \u201cpractical solution\u201d to the\u00a0crocodile\u00a0conundrum. It accused the farm owner of a \u201clack of co-operation,\u201d without elaborating.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Israeli businessman appears to have bitten off more than he can chew with plans for a\u00a0crocodile\u00a0farm in a West …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":176090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","mauthors-the-associated-press","mauthors-isaac-scharf","mauthors-alon-bernstein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}