Madagascar’s crocodile farmers waiting to get skin back in the game

What you need to know:

Madagascar.Business for people who deal in crocodile skin was once lucrative. However, due to a 2008 ban on crocodile skin from the island, the money coming in has reduced while the reptiles’ population has gone up

At the Croc Farm in Antananarivo, crocodiles lazily bask in the hot mid-morning sun, raising their core body temperatures and awaiting a chance to feed.

There are 6,000 crocodiles at the farm, the largest in the Madagascan capital and located conveniently close to Ivato International Airport. The French owners have another farm 300 kilometres away from Antananarivo capable of holding up to 12,000 crocodiles.

But not all is well in Madagascar’s crocodile industry. In 2008 the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), banned the export of crocodile skin and products from this island nation.

Crocodiles are ubiquitous in the rivers that crisscross Madagascar, with one estimate showing there are about 30 individuals per kilometre of river. Any crocodile with a back more than 45cm in length could be captured and killed, according to the norms.

However, with crocodile skin going for as much as $4 (about Shs14,500) per centimetre, a voracious appetite for crocodile skin in the global fashion industry (prices of bags at top labels like Hermés start at $30,000 (about Shs109m) and one mystery shopper recently paid a world-record $222,000 (Shs809m) for a shiny fuchsia crocodile bag studded with 18-carat white gold and diamond hardware) the hunt for the reptiles soon went out of control.

Soon even small crocodiles were being hunted down for their precious tiny skins and by the time the CITES embargo came into play, the population of Crocodylus niloticus, the only specie on the island was in alarming decline, with locals hunting down crocodiles in the wild.

Adapting to the ban

The ban on crocodile skin exports has also had some unintended consequences.

Free from the culling, the crocodile population has blossomed, leading to an increase in human-animal conflicts, and a fight-back by frustrated local residents.

“The communities were tempted to systematically destroy any crocodile eggs they found everywhere,” Ms Rabesihanaka said. “This was the way for them to slow down the reptile’s proliferation. They knew very well where mother crocs laid eggs in nature. This was one of the negative effects of the bans.”

The manufacturing at a local level has created jobs for talented Malagasy craftsmen and contributed to the national value chains but many of them are too small to create finished and intermediate products that can be sustainably exported.

“Our artisans tried to pool themselves together in associations. They wanted to create collective farms but they failed to do so as such an initiative demands a huge amount of money,” Ms Rabesihanaka says. “Breeding crocs is not like breeding chickens.”

Unable to grow their own crocs, the small artisans have continued to rely on the capture of crocs in the wild for their own supply.

Crocodiles laze around a crocodile farm in Madagascar. Crocodile farm owners in the country are trying to adapt as an international agency put limitations on the export of crocodile skin from the island. Photo by RIVONALA RAZAFISON

Madagascar’s crocodile industry might be about to get a new lease of life, however. The easing of the ban was agreed in 2010 and recent talks in Antananarivo with experts from the Crocodiles Specialist Group at CITES could lead to a formal lifting of the ban on exports, as early as next year.

In the meantime, investors in the crocodile farms watch their products grow longer in the mid-morning sun, waiting for a chance to put skin back into the lucrative export game, while locals continue to tread carefully on the river banks looking out for the reptiles that, at least for now, are protected kings of this island jungle.

How business has changed

In its heyday, the Croc Farm, which has a small private botanical and zoological park, employed around 130 people in its hatchery, nursery, slaughterhouses, and tannery. By 2010 the owners had spent another $550,000 on facilities to maintain and cull captured crocodiles in the 12,000-capacity farm in the northwest Maevatanana district.

Together with Zimbabwe, Tunisia, Australia, and Brazil, the Indian Ocean Island provided annually an average of 5,000 raw skins to the European and North American fashion industry.
Since the ban on exports was imposed, two-thirds of the workers were laid off. Rural communities, which collected about 20,000 crocodile eggs across the vast island for sale to hatcheries, also found themselves without a vital source of income.

“Apart from us and just a very few staff members, there is no longer nobody working here today,” an employee at Croc Farm ruefully told Africa Review. “Almost the whole personnel were dismissed due to the work stoppage.”

While local trade and manufactures of curios were not affected by the ban, the volume and value of that trade are insignificant in comparison to the lucrative export market.

Any international visitor to Madagascar is allowed to carry back with them up to four items made of crocodile skin, as long as they are labelled and certified by the government.

At Sobek Maroquinerie, a local company that produces products from crocodile skin, and puts them on sale in its shops in the capital can cost up to $3,426 for one item, more than half the per capita national income.

Local artisans, using tanning skills handed down from generation to generation, produce many of the products, but are behind the curve when it comes to modern methods required by the high-volume, high-value fashion industries.
“They all use mimosas, which are non-polluting while the worldwide tanning method relies on chrome though it pollutes environment,” Ms Sahonda Rabesihanaka, the CITES focal person in Madagascar told Africa Review.

The traditional process, although authentic, doesn’t always lead to the highest quality products.

“There are colorations and by-products that you can obtain only with chrome,” an employee at Sobek Maroquinerie said. “However, there are also clients who need only leather goods treated with plants. As natural, they are thought to be safer for the body’s health.”

Additional reporting from Africa Review