Alligator sinensis lives further from the tropics than most crocodilians and must survive genuinely cold winters in the lower Yangtze. Its solution is excavation. Individuals dig burrow systems into banks and levees, sometimes several metres long, incorporating chambers above the water table and openings that admit air.
Animals enter the burrows in autumn and remain largely dormant until spring, a period commonly given as about six months, with body temperature and metabolism falling accordingly. The same habit brought the species into direct conflict with agriculture, because tunnels through the banks of rice paddies and reservoirs weaken embankments. That conflict compounded the loss of wetland to farmland.
The wild population is very small, usually cited in the low hundreds of adults within reserves in Anhui, while Chinese breeding centres hold thousands. Reintroductions into restored wetlands are under way. Whether released captive stock will build self-sustaining wild populations is unsettled, and the genetic diversity of the founder animals is limited.