\n<\/p>\n
SAN MARIANO, ISABELA \u2013 The instruction, whispered on the bank of Dunoy Lake at seven in the evening, was that I should keep very still.<\/p>\n
Conservationist Amante Yog-yog Jr swept his torch across the black water. Two points of pale yellow caught the beam and held it: the eye-shine of an adult Philippine crocodile, the rarest crocodilian on Earth. Then a second pair, and a third. Two more sat low in the vegetation ringing the lake, and in a shallower arm, two hatchlings moved among the fish.<\/p>\n
On my own, I would not have seen them.<\/p>\n
Dunoy Lake lies at the back end of San Mariano, a town in Isabela province about 460km north of the capital Manila and the gateway to the Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park. It is roughly twice the land area of Singapore, with 60,000 people scattered across it.<\/p>\n
Reaching the lake took two hours on foot from where the paved road gave out, over rain-slick hills and mud that nearly took my boots, then wading across the Catallangan River, also crocodile territory. It is the walk families around Dunoy make weekly to reach the town centre.<\/p>\n
I arrived on July 28 caked in mud, and quickly learnt how elusive the creature is.<\/p>\n
That is the trick of the Crocodylus mindorensis<\/i> after dark. You never see the animal whole, only two dots of reflected light that go out the instant you shift your weight on the mud.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you make a noise, if it even hears your footsteps, that\u2019s it,\u201d Yog-yog had told me earlier that day. \u201cIt jumps into the water and you won\u2019t see it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Believed to be extinct in the wild in northern Luzon in the 1990s, the Philippine crocodile now numbers about 125 in Isabela, protected by residents who once hunted it.<\/p>\n
In Manila, the crocodile is not shy. It is the fat, grinning creature on placards at every anti-corruption protest, the effigy hauled through the streets, symbolising the government official who eats and eats and is never full. Nobody at those rallies is picturing Crocodylus mindorensis<\/i>. They are picturing, whether they know it or not, Lolong, the 6.17m saltwater crocodile taken from a creek in Agusan del Sur in 2011, which died in captivity within 18 months.<\/p>\n
In fact, the Philippine crocodile is endemic, critically endangered and small, topping out at about 3m. You can tell it from its saltwater cousin by the large scales behind its head. In San Mariano\u2019s recorded history, it has never killed a human.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes me sad that they compare the crocodile to greed,\u201d said Yog-yog, 39, who manages the Philippine Crocodile Conservation Centre for the Mabuwaya Foundation inside the Isabela State University.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe truth is, they eat very little, and only once every four days.\u201d<\/p>\n