Saving Cretan Crocodile "Sifis"

He said a specialist herpetologist was due to arrive on the island on Thursday, when a major operation will take place to capture the animal and return it to its natural environment.

"Crocodiles cannot survive and reproduce on Crete. A tropical-looking view is one thing and tropical conditions are quite another," he said concerning the animal, which has been sighted in a body of water created by the building of a hydroelectric dam that is destined to supply the entire area with electricity.

The mayor said the crocodile had most likely been abandoned there by a so-called "animal-lover" once he or she became tired of it and he dismissed the concerns of those fearing the rise of a "crocodile colony" in Cretan rivers.
In the meantime, he added, the area has been fenced off and various traps will be set on Thursday so that the crocodile might be captured alive and not killed.

The mayor stressed that the animal's location was absolutely pinpointed in an ecosystem that has grown around the artificial lake created by the dam, roughly 12 kilometres in circumference, which has become surrounded by lush vegetation, closer to tropical rainforest areas than that normal to Crete.

The sighting of a crocodile in Grete has become a local sensation, with media naming him “Sifis” and fans even creating facebook pages.

The mayor absolutely ruled out all possibility of allowing the crocodile to remain the lake as a tourist attraction, saying that Rethymno had absolutely "no ambition to have crocodile reproduction in its ecosystem".