Word – Watch Rare Siamese Crocodiles Hatching

Tiny snouts and long tails. Checkerboards of black and brown scales. Eggs the size of oranges cracking alongside hatchlings mewling and chirping like a choir of baby birds.

The birth of 60 Siamese crocodiles in the wild last month was all very Jurassic Park.

The hatchlings were the largest population born this century, representing two decades of conservation efforts. While the babies slipped and waddled through their trio of nests, their marble-like eyes blinked upon a bright new world for a species once nearly as extinct as the dinosaurs.

“There’s a biodiversity crisis around the world, but in the tropics of Southeast Asia it’s particularly acute,” said Pablo Sinovas, the country director for the Cambodia program of Fauna and Flora, the conservation group monitoring the comeback. “The fact that we’ve been able to help these crocodiles recover and see this landmark breeding event, it’s very significant.”

Siamese crocodiles were first listed as virtually extinct in the wild in 1992. While captive populations lived in zoos and crocodile farms, decades of poaching of the animals for their soft, coppery hides that were used in the fashion industry, along with habitat degradation, had razed the wild population.

In 2000, a very small population was recorded in the remote Cardamom Mountains of Cambodia. The Indigenous population of Chorng people had protected the crocodiles, which they considered sacred, for generations. The species is smaller and less aggressive than its saltwater crocodile relative, and there is no recorded evidence of attacks by the animals on humans, including people who wash clothes and children who swim in the rivers the crocodiles call home.

For the last two decades, Fauna and Flora has worked with government agencies and local people to formalize species protection through a program that provides a modest stipend, along with work clothes, GPS devices and transportation like kayaks and motorcycles.

“The community members already protecting the sites is key to why this program works,” Mr. Sinovas said. “Instead of a group coming from the outside, we’re supporting what’s already there.” At last count, a very rough estimate of 250 adult crocodiles persisted in Cambodia, according to Fauna and Flora, and between 500 and 1,000 existed in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Siamese crocodiles “are a charismatic, large predator, so they naturally fascinate humans, and they have cultural importance,” Mr. Sinovas said, noting that their conservation could have ripple effects.

“If we’re able to conserve Siamese crocodiles, which requires the conservation of wetlands they inhabit,” he said, “then by default we’re conserving the biodiversity that depends on those wetlands.”

But bringing a species back from the brink is slow going, and the Siamese crocodile is still considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Mr. Sinovas said he hoped the effort to save the largest population of the animals in Cambodia could be a blueprint for smaller groups that have been found in Laos and Borneo.

Another part of that blueprint is captive breeding, and this spring, Fauna and Flora celebrated a different milestone: the largest ever release of captive-bred Siamese crocodiles, with 50 juveniles set loose in the Cardamom Mountains. It will take about a decade for the juveniles and the newest batch of hatchlings to reach sexual maturity. Then, scientists and local residents will have a better understanding of how likely the wild population is to survive and grow.

“They’re very resilient animals,” said Iri Gill, the manager for coldblooded animals, which includes snakes and crocodiles, at the Chester Zoo in Britain. “If you give them the right protection, they will bounce back.”

Mr. Gill’s ringtone is a recording of the chirping sound hatchlings make when they’re born, a synchronous call for their siblings to emerge alongside them and their mother to find them. That first sound, he said, shows how they gain strength in numbers.