Bangladesh begins Crocodile export

An unconventional product was added to Bangladesh’s export basket as The Reptile Farm Ltd, country’s lone crocodile farm, on Friday made its maiden shipment of crocodile export to Germany, after five years into its inception.
‘A Thai Airways flight carrying 67 frozen saltwater crocodiles reared in my farm left Dhaka at around 1:20pm today (Friday),’ said Mustaq Ahmed, managing director of the Reptile Farm Ltd.
Heidelberg University of Germany is importing the crocodiles sized in between 12 inches to 14 feet for research, he said.
‘The maiden export of crocodiles from Bangladesh would fetch $1,00,000,’ he said.
‘If the shipment reaches in time, scope for export of crocodiles from the country will widen.’
The country’s first ever move to export crocodiles was delayed several times due to bureaucratic tangles over issuance of permits to the exporters.
Mushtaque said that their farm was ready to export crocodiles to Germany in December 2009, but it could not be possible, as the forest department did not give the green signal then.
The farm, located on 15 acres of land at Hatiber village under Bhaluka upazila in Mymensingh, has now 825 saltwater crocodiles.
In the last breeding season (July-September), 411 baby crocodiles were born in their farm, and 240 were born in 2008 and 140 in 2007.
Breeding season for this year started on Thursday, said Mushtaque.
The farm imported 75 crocodiles, ranging from 7 feet to 12 feet in length, from Malaysia for commercial breeding at a cost of Tk 1.25 crore. Of them, eight died on the way to the farm, which was established in October 2004.
Mushtaque said that they had set up the farm with the aim of exporting over 5,000 crocodile skins annually and creating the means to earn up to $5 million by 2015.
Various countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, have shown keen interest in importing crocodile skins from the farm, he said, and expressed the hope that they would be able to export 500 crocodile skins annually by next two or three years.

Via: NewAge