After decades of killing by hunters who sold their prized skins to make pocketbooks, shoes and belts, the caiman was a threatened species and less than 10,000 Orinoco Crocodiles were left. No less dangerous, the caiman can grow to 10 feet and 400 pounds. Its harvest is a tricky business. Workers pluck eggs from nests along the sandy river banks, often under the menacing gaze of a mother caiman's snout poking from the waters. Incubated eggs hatch about 70 days later, and the baby caimans raised in pens for a year, when they are released into the wild or within swamp ranches that dot the Apure.
Officials say the process improves the caiman's survival rate.
Most baby caimans are snatched up by hawks, piranha, anacondas, foxes and other crocodiles. Man is its only predator once it reaches adult size. Indigenous tribes have long eaten the eggs for protein when food is scarce, and by law they cannot be charged with poaching. It's tradition for them,'' says Jose Garcia, director of Wildlife Protection in San Fernando de Apure, about 190 miles south of Caracas. Though dwarfed by the man-eating Orinoco Crocodile, the caimans still pose a threat.