My Husband and Other Animals — The making of Croc Bank
23.02.12
We walk down the main path of the Madras Crocodile Bank as we've done countless times before. But this time I ask Rom to narrate how the place took shape. “The process took 10 years at least,” Rom says.
In the early 1970s, crocs had a hard time worldwide. Rom did the first croc surveys in India and found the three Indian species struggling to survive. It was the usual gripe of habitat loss and poaching. Tony Pooley in Zimbabwe and Ted Joanen in the U.S. were breeding Nile crocs and alligators respectively and re-stocking wild populations. Rom felt he could do the same for the mugger, the gharial and salt water crocs in India. That was why the Croc Bank was set up.
Rom and his then-wife, Zai, invested their wedding gift of Rs. 14,000 in the new venture. Rom went farther and farther down the road to Mahabalipuram until he found land within his budget. Since it was sandy, he would just need to scoop out a hole to hit the water table and create a pool. Tourism was still a nascent industry, but Rom could see the potential. This was crucial as a long-term strategy as in later years, the gate collection was to fund many conservation projects in the wild.
Source: The Hindu