内容摘要：“You can’t base your claim to the land on religion – civilisations are about the people who develop their identity, their works and monuments – even their language,” Ghazzal said.

“You can’t base your claim to the land on religion – civilisations are about the people who develop their identity, their works and monuments – even their language,” Ghazzal said.

The young are fed chicken, beef and vitamins, reaching about 6kg (13lb) by the time they are a year old.Adult Orinocos can exceed 5 metres (16ft) in length and live for decades – a 70-year-old named Picopando resides at Masaguaral Ranch.

At the Leslie Pantin Zoo, Omar Hernandez, 63, biologist and head of FUDECI, tags the foot of a hatchling. Saving the species, he says, would require multiple efforts: Research, protection, education and management.“We are doing the management, collecting the hatchlings, raising them for a year and freeing them,” he says. But “that is practically the only thing being done. And it is not being done at scale.”Each year, the group releases about 200 young crocodiles into the wild.

The biologists wait until the animals reach a year old, a critical period in their lives, Hernandez explains. During this time, “almost all are hunted.”In April, scientists released this year’s batch. The young crocodiles, with their jaws bound, were placed in crates and transported from the zoo to the Capanaparo River in western Venezuela, near the Colombian border, where human settlements are sparse. This part of the river runs through private land, lowering the risk that the animals will be hunted immediately.

Alvaro Velasco, 66, placed tape over the eyes of a juvenile to help it remain calm during transport.

“People ask me, ‘Why crocodiles? They’re ugly,’” says Velasco, president of the Crocodile Specialist Group. “To me, they’re fabulous animals. You release them and they stay there, looking at you, as if to say, ‘What am I supposed to do in this huge river?’ And then they swim off.”, saying that the justice system was “an instrument of oppression for a dictatorship desperately trying to survive”.

The 53-year-old, who denies supporting the Rwanda-backed rebels who have seized two major cities in the country’s conflict-battered east, has been in self-imposed exile since 2023.The former president, who has repeatedly said he was returning from exile to help find a solution to the crisis, accused Kinshasa of taking “arbitrary decisions with disconcerting levity”.

Congo’s Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to grant the government’s request to lift theKabila – leader of the country from 2001 to 2019 – had enjoyed because of his honorific title as “senator for life”.