We’ve seen hunters battling giant crocodiles on the covers of pulp magazines, but yesterday, it happened for real. On the southern island of Mindanao, in the Agusan del Sur township of Bunawan, hunters snared a giant crocodile measured at twenty-one feet and more than 2,300 pounds. That makes it the biggest specimen ever captured in the Philippines. Gleeful mayor Edwin Cox Elorde posed with the creature, and, after one hundred villagers managed to wrestle the trussed croc into a fenced enclosure, announced plans to use it as the central attraction in a planned ecotourism theme park. While the capture and exploitation of the animal bothers environmentalists (including us), and we can just picture this future theme park (not a pretty image), Bunawan crocodiles’ free days frankly were numbered from the moment one of them bit the head off a ten-year-old girl back in 2009. When more people narrowly escaped being croc chow, and two reptiles ate the head off a carabao (water buffalo), the push to capture the animals intensified. Yesterday, hired hunters succeeded. Up next: the croc’s inevitable escape and vengeful rampage.
Update: Lolong, which was the name given to the croc, has died. After living an estimated century in the wild, he lasted less than a year in human hands. Figures. Locals plan to display him stuffed so they can keep cashing in on him.
