Crocodile farm
Crocodile farms are agricultural enterprises that focus on the breeding and marketing of crocodiles have specialized and / or crocodile products. The main product is crocodile skin.
history
The first farms were established at the beginning of the 20th century. Initially they resembled zoological gardens rather than commercial breeding companies. However, when the first protective laws came into force in the early 1960s to protect the threatened crocodiles, they made it necessary to obtain crocodile leather from farms. This drove up the price and made crocodile breeding a lucrative business.
Nowadays there are two types of farms. The state-subsidized farms that breed the animals to increase the wild population and the private companies that market crocodiles as a product.
Most of the private crocodile farms' income comes from the tourism and marketing of meat, which has recently grown in popularity, as well as from the hides.
distribution
Crocodile farms can be found wherever the 23 different crocodile, gavial and alligator species still alive today are at home. These are above all Australia , large parts of Southeast Asia , Africa , as well as Central and South America , especially the Amazon basin .
literature
- Charles A. Ross (Ed.), Stephen Garnett (Ed.), Tony Pyrzakowski: Crocodiles and Alligators. Orbis, Niedernhausen 2002, ISBN 3-572-01319-4
