Crocodiles may be resurging as reports rise
The dark shape in a West Delray canal looked like a pair of truck tires. As Robert Recupito drove his golf cart closer, he could make out a gray body and narrow snout: an American crocodile.
Recupito, manager of the residential community, reported the reptile to the state wildlife commission, which sent out officers who confirmed a 7-foot to 8-foot crocodile, far inland from its usual coastal haunts.
“Should I have a trapper come get this thing?” he asked. No, they told him. Unless he’s acting aggressively, leave him alone. “So we talked to neighbors, and it hadn’t threatened anybody,” he said. “So I left him alone, and told people, told the board members and kept an eye out and haven’t seen him since.”
Crocodiles show up in unexpected places these days, as the species continues its recovery from near-extinction 40 years ago. One shut down a beach in Hollywood last November, becoming the star of a televised drama that ended peacefully with its relocation. Last year, the state wildlife service fielded 138 crocodile reports from worried South Floridians, as the reptiles turned up a little too close to their homes, up from 80 reports 10 years ago.
Once down to fewer than 300 at the tip of the Everglades, the crocodile has recovered its numbers and expanded its range. Today, 1,500 to 2,000 crocodiles occupy a core area of Key Largo, Everglades National Park and southeastern Miami-Dade County, with outliers ranging up to Palm Beach County on the east coast and Lee County on the west coast.
One crocodile was sunning itself along a bike path on A1A in Boca Raton, according to two years of incident reports obtained by the Sentinel from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Another prowled the waterways south of Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale. They’ve been repeatedly seen in Hollywood in the neighborhoods near the beach along Sheridan Avenue. More have turned up in coastal neighborhoods of Miami and its suburbs.
“Crocodiles certainly have recovered in Florida,” said Frank Mazzotti, professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Florida and an expert on crocodiles and alligators. “They occupy most of their historic habitat, where habitat remains, probably in densities that aren’t far off from what they were historically.”
The recovery of a carnivorous reptile that can grow to a length of 14 feet or more may seem like a mixed blessing for South Florida, with so many coastal neighborhoods full of children and pets.
But while the American crocodile has killed people on rare occasions elsewhere in its range, which extends through the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and northern South America, there have been no documented fatal attacks in Florida.
The species, which lives on fish, crabs, snakes, turtles, birds and small mammals, is considered more reclusive than its more numerous freshwater cousin, the alligator, and tends to avoid people.
When a fatal crocodile attack makes the news, the incident is more likely to involve the huge saltwater crocodile of Australia and southern Asia, a species ranked by the famed biologist E.O. Wilson with the great white shark and Sundarbans tiger as the last “expert predator of man still living free.”
Until 2014, there had been no known attacks at all in Florida. That year, a 26-year-old man suffered bites to his shoulder, arm and neck and a female companion suffered minor bites from a 12-foot crocodile while swimming in a lake in Coral Gables at night, an activity not considered advisable in crocodile habitat. State trappers hunted down the crocodile, a well-known Gables by the Sea inhabitant named Pancho, and killed it as they tried to capture it.
In the Hollywood beach incident, an 8-foot crocodile swam south Nov. 20 from Dania Beach and decided to come ashore near the Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort, where it sat in the surf with its head raised, ignoring a crowd that eventually included police, wildlife officers and news helicopters. Captured that afternoon, the crocodile was released unharmed in a more remote area, where it was less likely to come into contact with sunbathers and swimmers.
The next day, Coby Senick, of West Lake Village, a community south of Sheridan Street near the beach, cursed his luck at missing the sight.
“I walk to the beach often from my home. I open up the newspaper and there’s a crocodile on the beach,” he said. “And I’m very upset because I didn’t go to the beach that day, and I missed the crocodile.”
But as it turned out, he hadn’t missed his chance.
“Approximately a week later, there was a crocodile on the bank of the canal in my backyard,” he said. “I immediately thought it was the same crocodile because it said on the news that they had relocated the crocodile.”
The West Lake Village crocodile was reported to the state wildlife commission, according to records, but no action was taken to remove it.
“There’s nothing they can do,” Senick said. “The crocodiles were here before us. They’re not going to come and capture this thing because it’s not a problem to anyone.”
Although the state wildlife service often hears from irate or frightened residents, wildlife officers rarely relocate crocodiles, preferring to educate people on how to live with them.
“Crocodiles in Florida tend to be wary of people, and as a result, incidents are extremely rare,” said Tammy Sapp, spokeswoman for the state wildlife commission. “The FWC’s approach to dealing with crocodile-human conflicts is a balance between ensuring the needs of a recovering imperiled native species and maintaining public safety . ...
“If you see a crocodile, keep your distance. Swim only in designated swimming areas during daylight hours. And keep pets on a leash and away from the water. Also, never feed a crocodile and dispose of fish scraps only in designated waste containers because discarding scraps in the water may attract crocodiles.”
Listed as an endangered species in 1975, the crocodile had its status upgraded to threatened in 2007 to reflect its improved prospects.
Although crocodile numbers are up in general, they may have dipped in the past few years, judging from a decline in incident reports from a peak in 2012 and 2013.
But incident reports have begun increasing again, and Mazzotti said he’s reluctant to draw conclusions from a few down years, since numbers can fluctuate so much.