That's the live export quota for crocs, Jody, so I assume almost all are going to the pet trade. I didn't use salvator because I was comparing it to the number of scientist-shot crocs in museum collections, and I don't know what that number would be for salvator (more, but who knows how many).

When you're down to two, it's time to take them in, in my opinion, but no chance they'd go to a private breeder, no matter how good he/she was. Gummint will make sure of that. Chances are, they're stuffed by then anyway.

Some captive breeding and reintroduction programs have worked, but sadly, most have not. The ones that work tend to be for things that are ecological generalists (like planting bass or sunfish in a pond), and usually those aren't threatened with extinction either. It is much harder to pull this off with ecological specialists -- look at Calif. condors, for example. From a small captive flock and the last few wild birds taken in in the late 1980s, there are now about 250 condors alive, most of them bred in captivity. Something like 100 of these have been released back into the wild. Quite a few have died, and only in the last two-three years have there been any breeding attempts in the wild, and all but one of those has failed. It's a huge effort, something like $35 million so far, and it will have to go on a lot longer before there is even a gambler's chance it will succeed. Captive breeding has worked, but the reintroduction isn't working, so far. Sadly, a lotta things go that way.

It's a farkofalot easier to preserve enough habitat before it's too late, because it turns out that Mother Nature is still better at breeding things than we are.

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