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Concerns surround endangered alligator breeding

Chinese experts have warned that inbreeding could harm efforts to save the country's endangered Yangtze alligator, already decimated by environmental pollution in its native habitat, state media reported on Tuesday.
Worsening ecological conditions in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River caused numbers to plummet in recent years, and a 2005 survey found fewer than 150 in the wild, the China Daily said.
But a population explosion at an artificial breeding centre charged with releasing robust alligators into the wild has prompted fears of their "genetic degradation", the paper said, citing officials.
"Offspring produced by genetically similar parents are often weak and have a hard time surviving," said Wang Chaolin, a senior engineer at the Chinese Alligator Propagation Research Centre at Xuancheng, in China’s eastern Anhui province.