In June, people in Hasafa village in Qalyubiya shared photos and videos on social media of a small crocodile, about a meter long, roaming through a drainage canal. A team from the Environment Ministry was dispatched to catch it, and the ministry later said the crocodile would be taken to Aswan and released into its “natural habitat in Lake Nasser.” A few days later, another larger crocodile was spotted sliding from a muddy bank into an irrigation canal near the village of Shabramant in Aboul Nomros in Giza. Again, an Environment Ministry team located it and transferred it to one of the ministry’s facilities. The successive sightings of Nile crocodiles so far north along the river raises questions over how they got there. Since the Aswan High Dam was completed in 1970, the species has been found almost exclusively in Lake Nasser, as changes to their natural habitat had already reduced their movement beyond the lake. In its statement about the Hasafa crocodile, the ministry suggested that someone had thrown the animal into the canal, pointing to the illegal possession and trade of crocodiles. Ekramy al-Abassiry, the general director of the South Egypt sector of protected areas and the head of the Crocodile Management Unit at the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency in Aswan, offers the same explanation. Young crocodiles, he says, are taken from around Lake Nasser shortly after hatching, transported to northern governorates and sold as pets, only to be abandoned once they grow too large to handle. The possession or transport of crocodiles — whether alive or dead — is illegal, Abassiry says. That is why many people who keep the animals avoid handing them over to the authorities once they grow too large and instead release them into public canals. The crocodiles’ journey from Lake Nasser to northern Egypt has been accompanied by a shift in how people relate to them. Periods of coexistence were common before crocodiles were hunted for touristic and commercial purposes, despite the legal ban. Officials have repeatedly proposed regulating crocodile hunting in a way that would generate economic returns, without reaching a solution. Before crocodiles became a commercial commodity in the second half of the 1990s, fishers around Lake Nasser hunted them for attacking fish within licensed fishing areas and damaging nets and fishing tents, Nabil Mansour, a fisher on the lake and a former candidate to lead the Aswan Fishers Syndicate tells Mada Masr. The second half of the 1990s brought exceptional floods after years of drought, pushing Lake Nasser’s water levels to unprecedented highs. Water flowing from Sudan carried some crocodiles into the southern part of the lake, while flooding expanded the shallow waters and flood control channels that make ideal breeding grounds for crocodiles, according to officials and researchers who spoke to Al-Wafd during its coverage of the 1997 floods. As the floods expanded the crocodiles’ habitat, encounters with people around the lake became more frequent. Between 1996 and 1998, several fatal attacks were recorded, resulting in the death of a laborer, a fisher, a mechanic at the Aswan High Dam dock and a shepherd from the Bishari and Ababda tribes. Another man survived after abandoning his camel to a crocodile. As complaints about large crocodiles mounted, the military deployed snipers around the dam’s dock during the 1998 floods to kill the animals, as they were considered a threat to workers, fishers and local residents. The attacks opened the debate over allowing crocodile hunting to reduce their numbers, amid concerns about their impact on nearby communities and fish populations — concerns that officials and specialists continued to dismiss. At the same time, proposals for crocodile farms began to emerge, investments were announced, and studies were launched into the feasibility of raising crocodiles. Reducing crocodiles to little more than a threat to people and fish overlooks a much longer history of coexistence with the communities around Lake Nasser. Even during years when crocodile numbers swelled with the floods, they never reached the point of devastating fish populations or preying on people, a fisher who left illegal fishing to work in environmental conservation tells Mada Masr on condition of anonymity. “A crocodile only attacks when it’s hungry or if someone gets close to its eggs or young,” they say. For fishers, especially Nubians, the relationship with crocodiles is, for the most part, one of coexistence. Before casting their net, a fisher would “feed the crocodile two big fish for good luck,” and it would then move away from their fishing site, the fisher adds. Large crocodiles are only killed if they attack fishing camps, a Nubian fisher who catches and trades crocodiles says to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity. Smaller ones are sometimes accidentally caught in fishing nets. Some are released back into the lake, others are mummified and hung above the doors of Nubian homes, where they are believed to bring good luck, they add. And if fishers are forced to kill a male crocodile after an attack, they would dry its testicles for use in folk practices associated with male virility, Mansour says. As for keeping live crocodiles in Nubian homes, the Nubian fisher says it began as a hobby, keeping up with a cultural tradition. In the early 1990s, however, after armed Islamist violence in Upper Egypt dealt a heavy blow to tourism, live crocodiles became a way to attract the few visitors who still visited Nubian villages. Mohamed Nabil, who works in the tourism sector in the Nubian village of West Soheil, says families began displaying crocodiles in small concrete pools in their homes as part of the “Nubian identity.” Though he disputes the idea that keeping live crocodiles was ever a Nubian tradition, either in West Soheil or any other village. Nabil, whose family owns several guesthouses in West Soheil, says that in the beginning, only three homes in the village kept crocodiles as a hobby. By the end of the 1990s, the practice had spread rapidly. Having a crocodile became a major part of the appeal of visiting a Nubian home. In any case, none of this, the Nubian fisher says, amounted to organized commercial activity until the crocodile trade later expanded beyond Aswan. According to Nabil, the trade began to take shape during the tourism downturn of the 1990s, when tourist bazaar owners started selling young crocodiles to attract visitors. The trade didn’t remain confined to Aswan for long. Crocodiles soon began making their way into Cairo’s wild animals markets, eventually turning up in irrigation canals across the Nile Delta. In 2003, young crocodiles appeared in Lake Manzala and the Damietta branch of the Nile after attacking fishers. Local residents blamed the incident on young men in the village of Tabl, in Damietta, who had been raising crocodiles in their homes. Then, in 2006, a two-meter crocodile escaped from workers at a restaurant in Giza’s Pharaonic Village as they were transporting four crocodiles the owner had bought to entertain visitors. Since then, crocodiles have continued to turn up far from Lake Nasser almost every year. According to a Mada Masr count based on Egyptian newspaper and website archives, Nile crocodiles have appeared 30 times across 13 governorates between 2003 and June this year. There has been one recorded sighting in each of Cairo, Alexandria, Sharqiya, Gharbiya, Beni Suef, Matrouh and New Valley; two in each of Monufiya and Kafr al-Sheikh; and three in Qalyubiya. Aswan recorded four incidents between 2010 and 2013, followed by one more in 2017. Nabil suggests some of these Aswan cases were likely linked to foreign tourists wanting to release young crocodiles into the Nile, which, he says, is the reason sightings tend to occur during the tourist season, between September and April. Giza has seen the highest number of sightings, with nine recorded cases. Much of that can be traced to Abu Rawash, a village in Kerdasa that has for more than a century been known for catching, raising and trading wild animals, particularly reptiles. People from Abu Rawash have traveled across Egypt collecting wild animals, with some later establishing partnerships with agriculture, science, veterinary medicine and pharmacy faculties at Egyptian and Arab universities, as well as universities in Asia and Europe. They also supply snakes and scorpions to VACSERA, one of the oldest Egyptian vaccine manufacturers. Two families obtained licenses to operate small zoos that host university and school visits. But everyone involved in the crocodile trade who spoke to Mada Masr says Abu Rawash’s declared business conceals a much larger trade in wild animals, including 14 species whose sale is prohibited under Egypt’s environmental law and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), to which Egypt is a signatory. From Abu Rawash, these animals make their way to public Friday markets in Cairo and Alexandria. The Nubian fisher describes Abu Rawash as “the biggest crocodile market for traders, not hobbyists.” For those at the very start of the supply chain, the profits are modest. The fisher says a crocodile was sold for just LE10 in the 1990s, when the trade was still controlled by only two or three traders in Aswan. It later expanded with the spread of home hatcheries for crocodile eggs. Today, a crocodile leaves Aswan for just around LE100 before passing through wholesalers in places like Abu Rawash and eventually reaching vendors. At Cairo’s Friday market in Sayeda Aisha, Mada Masr found one vendor selling a crocodile for LE1,500. They said most buyers purchase them to keep as pets. The hunt begins each year in late June, when crocodile eggs hatch around the shores of Lake Nasser, environmental researcher Amr al-Hady, who spent years working on the lake, tells Mada Masr. Female crocodiles bury around 40-50 eggs in sandy nesting sites along the inlets, in what fishers call the hatta. In the wild, natural predation leads to only 5-10 percent surviving. Removing eggs from these nests, thus, becomes a direct threat to the very existence of the species in the lake, Hady says. Omar Manjouneh, the director of Crocodopolis, an upcoming documentary which explores the crocodiles of Lake Nasser, says the film’s research found that the animals’ behavior has begun to shift in response to the changing factors around them. Unlike their historical behavior, Lake Nasser’s crocodiles now show signs of fear toward humans, diving underwater as soon as they spot a boat or hear its engine. They have also begun showing a tendency to migrate in an apparent attempt to escape poaching, even though they are not naturally a migratory species. Mansour, the fisher on Lake Nasser, argues that the state knows there is a crocodile trading market but has chosen to ban the practice and pursue people found with young crocodiles instead of regulating the trade. He believes the government should allow limited hunting during designated seasons and license crocodile farms for trade purposes, which, he says, would curb overhunting while giving fishers a legal source of income instead of forcing the trade underground. “The government only studies things on paper. It never consults the people who actually live here,” Mansour says. The idea of turning crocodiles into a regulated economic resource is not new. Even after the floods of the 1990s and the accompanying surge in the species’ population had subsided, government agencies repeatedly explored the possibility. In 2007, the agriculture and environment ministries launched a joint study to estimate crocodile numbers in Lake Nasser using satellite imagery, with the aim of determining how many could be commercially exploited without upsetting the lake’s ecological balance. The survey, which ran until 2013, estimated the population at between 2,200-3,000 animals capable of breeding, although some researchers believe those numbers have since fallen due to increased fishing, lower flood levels and expanding agricultural and industrial activities around the lake. While the study was underway, Egypt sought to change the crocodile’s status under CITES. In 2010, Egypt submitted a proposal to the convention’s 15th Conference of the Parties, seeking to move the Nile crocodile from Appendix I, which prohibits commercial trade in endangered species, to Appendix II, which covers species that are not threatened with extinction but could become so if trade is left unregulated. The change would have allowed Egypt to establish licensed crocodile farms and export crocodile skins and other products, and have part of production in Lake Nasser itself. The government proposed an initial annual export quota of 750 crocodile skins, presenting the project as a way to create jobs for communities around the lake while helping curb illegal hunting. The proposal won the support of 60 countries, but 38 opposed it, led by European states that questioned whether Egypt had adequate management and oversight in place. The conference ultimately agreed to move the Nile crocodile to Appendix II but with a zero commercial export quota until Egypt meets a series of conditions, including conducting scientific research, thus leaving the plans for commercial crocodile farms on hold. The idea resurfaced in early 2016, when then-Environment Minister Khaled Fahmy announced that the ministry was studying the establishment of a pilot crocodile farm. It later signed a cooperation protocol with the General Authority for Fish Resources Development to build a 50-feddan farm two km from Lake Nasser. But three years ago, the head of the Crocodile Management Unit at the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency in Aswan told Al-Ahram that the land had never been allocated because no authority had been assigned responsibility for it. Another attempt followed in 2019, when the Agriculture Ministry announced licensing requirements for crocodile farms. No applications were submitted, however, and the government has not announced any further developments. According to Abassiry, the biggest obstacle to establishing crocodile farms is the high cost of the studies needed before a project can begin, making investors reluctant to commit, especially since returns could take years to materialize. With every official attempt stalling, crocodiles have continued to leave Lake Nasser through the informal trade. The market expanded in the security vacuum that followed the January 2011 revolution. Authorities tried to curb it by arresting people found with crocodiles at airports and ports, tracking down sellers on social media, confiscating stuffed crocodiles from bazaars and returning live ones to Lake Nasser. But while the state kept returning the crocodiles to the lake, the route by which they were leaving it remained open. And Nile crocodiles continued to turn up in Delta irrigation canals and along the Mediterranean. Hady argues that if the state moves ahead with crocodile farming, it should also legalize the keeping of crocodiles in Nubian homes in West Soheil rather than leaving the practice outside any regulatory framework. Doing so, he says, would help preserve a tourism activity that has become part of many visitors’ experience, while also bringing the practice under the supervision of the Environment Ministry, helping curb overhunting and ensuring better animal welfare, particularly as some foreign tourists have become increasingly critical of the conditions in which crocodiles are kept in Nubian homes. The fisher who left illegal fishing to work in conservation says those initiatives have recently tried to reduce overhunting by educating fishers and persuading them into collecting only some of the nests in each inlet and leaving the rest undisturbed, while also refraining from catching large crocodiles. The idea, they say, is that protecting crocodiles will only work if it also serves the fisher’s own interests. “We’ve started telling them: the big crocodile you catch today is the eggs you’ll lose next year.”The post The unregulated crocodile first appeared on Mada Masr.
