Crocodylus intermedius nests in a narrow window. Females excavate holes in sandbanks and beaches exposed as the Orinoco and its tributaries fall in the dry season, and the roughly three-month incubation is timed so that hatching falls near the start of the rains, when rising water and returning fish give the young somewhere to go.
The arrangement is inherently precarious. An early or heavy rain event floods nests before hatching, and shifting sandbars can bury or erode them. Nest-site availability also depends on river flow, which dams, channel modification and sediment extraction alter.
The species was hunted intensively for hides from the 1930s to the 1960s, reducing it to a small remnant. It is Critically Endangered, with wild adults commonly estimated at only a few hundred across Colombia and Venezuela, and captive-rearing and release programmes have operated for decades. Estimates of the current wild population vary considerably between surveys and should be treated as approximate.