Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Crocodile caught in Hollywood
Beachgoers gawk as reptile comes ashore near Johnson Street
A 6-foot crocodile on Hollywood beach was caught Monday afternoon, after its appearance that morning drew television news helicopters and hundreds of onlookers.
A wildlife officer snared the crocodile by the neck and dragged it up the beach, as the big reptile remained motionless, its mouth open. Officials tied its mouth shut with black tape. It was placed on a truck and driven off the beach, to cheers and applause from beachgoers who appeared to be rooting for the crocodile to emerge safe from its encounter with wildlife officers and police.
As a federally protected species, it won’t be harmed. It will be eval- uated, tagged and released into a suitable habitat, said Katie Purcell, spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The crocodile, a native Florida species that’s distinct from the more common alligators, was first spotted near the Dania Beach pier, drifted south and came ashore
around Johnson Street, said Joann Hussey, spokeswoman for Hollywood. As the crocodile attracted a crowd of beachgoers — many of them guests at the nearby Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort — police officers held people back.
A Hollywood police officer approached people taking photos and told them to back up.
“Can you run 18 miles an hour?” the officer asked one woman. “No,” she said. “He can,” the officer said. Everyone backed up.
Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy, riding on a dune buggy with the police as the crocodile headed south, joked, “So when it gets to Hallandale, we’re done, right?”
“We’ve already posted some cool photos on Facebook,” said Joe Fusco on vacation from Detroit with his family. “We were planning to go for a swim, but probably not now. It’s kind of fun actually, but no one can get in the water until they get this thing out of here.”
American crocodiles, which can grow to 16 feet, live in brackish and salt water in coastal areas. Their U.S. population is strongest in Florida Bay, Everglades National Park and the Upper Florida Keys. But they have been spotted in Hollywood, Boca Raton and other coastal cities, as well as on the Gulf coast.
As the crocodile came within a half-mile of the Hallandale Beach border, a reporter called Hallandale Beach City Manager Roger Carlton, who appeared surprised by the news.
“As soon as we hang up, I’m going to call the police chief,” he said. But he added that he had nothing against crocodiles.
“Hallandale is a very inclusive community,” he said. “And we welcome all visitors.”
Diane Warner came out after seeing the crocodile on TV.
“This is a sight to see,” she said. “I’ve heard of alligators coming up on the beach but never a crocodile. This is his environment, but I think the crowd’s freaking him out.”
Although there have been very few known attacks by American crocodiles on people in the United States and no known fatal attacks, there have been attacks — some fatal — in other parts of the crocodile’s range, which covers the Caribbean, Central American and northern South America.
Once occupying a range that extended as far north as Lake Worth on the east coast and Tampa Bay on the west coast, they had been reduced by coastal development and hunting to a stronghold in northern Florida Bay by the 1970s.
But crocodile numbers rose sharply in the past 20 years or so, partly due to the inadvertent construction of good crocodile habitat in the cooling canals of the Turkey Point nuclear plant and in the earthen banks of a failed housing development on Key Largo that would become the Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge.
From a low of 300 or so in the 1970s, crocodiles have increased their numbers to about 2,000, not counting hatchlings, according to the state wildlife commission. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service upgraded their status from endangered to threatened.
Purcell, of the state wildlife service, called them “an endangered species success story.”