KASARA, Nepal - As Prem Sharma steps gingerly into the sand-filled chamber, lines of baby crocodiles basking in the warm sunshine splash into a pond, eyes glinting behind their long, thin snouts.

Sharma quietly puts his hand into the green water, takes a young reptile from the pool, opens its mouth with a brush and begins to clean its teeth with potash, its thrashing 60 cm body held under his knee.

The activity, repeated every three or four days, is just one example of the tender care lavished on Gharial crocodiles at a farm southwest of the Nepali capital of Kathmandu, an effort to save the critically endangered species from extinction.