Man-Eating Crocodiles Are at Record Numbers, & Conservationists Love It

[Music] the northern territory of australia is seeing a population explosion but it's not humans who are massively growing in number just trolling the edge for food we'll see if it comes up in a very big crop very healthy crocodile this one you can see how fat he is across [Music] 50 years ago crocodiles were hunted almost to the point of disappearing so the government outlawed killing them for sport or profit it's the job of park rangers like gary lidner and desiree nargi to go out on south alligator river and keep tabs on the roughly 100 000 crocs that are swimming these waters and sunning themselves in the banks the crocodile population that's in the park at the moment is probably a nearing peak population or carrying capacity that was seen before european contact and interference in this country in terms of you know removing crocs and all that sort of stuff for me it's a privilege because as growing up in the 70s and that crocs were very rarely seen and now we're seeing something that hasn't been seen for probably over 200 years so this crocodile here you can see bite marks all over it and it had the rear right back leg ripped off by another crocodile it's just a natural population of crocs there's no they're not infested they're not over populated they basically crocodiles control each other crocodiles control crocodiles but also other predators control crocodiles and also the weather events control crocodiles saltwater crocodiles and their smaller freshwater cousins are apex predators they're pretty much the top of the food chain around here saltwater crocks will eat humans and they do a man was attacked here in 2017 as he waded through the swollen river dozens of crocodiles are often seen here the territory spent a lot of time and money educating the public on how to stay safe essentially be vigilant and give crocs space yeah all afternoon cruising up and down that's theirs this is mine there's a lot of difference between you could have a croc at kale's crossing grabbing a person every day if they wanted to i think it's just purely on the crocodile's turn but most times people are compliant they understand the risk they respect crocodiles and they don't take the risk but you always get a minority that do and you look at most of the croc attacks it's when people have been in the water these days there's about one croc for each of the territories two humans so tourists are flocking here to get a glimpse of these creatures in the wild so watch him change his attitude with this the bigger the food the more active they become this crock is probably one of the biggest crops in the wild in the world that we know of okay two and a half to five thousand pounds of biting pressure there that's the amelia behind the roof of the boat [Music] [Laughter] yeah we have strategic areas around the harbour where we place crocodile traps they're there year round there was a sighting earlier on uh this week at stokes hill wharf over a large crocodile uh the member of the public reported it to be four and a half metres that'll be one of our goals today to head out and see if animals in any of our traps ian hunt at a team of five other rangers spend their days setting and clearing traps near the northern territory's biggest city of darwin as crocodile numbers have grown so has the chance of the animals trying to enter the harbour getting dangerously close to people we've caught over 130 crocodiles this year tracking probably over 300 crocodiles for this year will be removed that's a pretty average year for us somewhere between 300 to 350 crocodiles would be a good year anything up to four and a half meters has been pulled out of our traps and everything in between [Music] shouldn't be too difficult it's not it's not got that much weight in him [Music] told you wasn't very heavy this crocodile here is probably um over two and a half meters and if that was to grab a hold of an adult human it would easily be capable of drowning them so yeah this is actually an animal that i would consider to be a threat to humans so it's good that he's not getting any closer to the city today [Music] if a croc nudged that then yeah unfortunately that guy would be in the water with a crocodile yeah it wouldn't end well for him these crocs will be euthanized hunt says his job is about more than getting rid of deadly reptiles some people believe that all crocodiles should be gone and shot so they can enjoy the waterways and enjoy their lifestyle and other people believe the crocodiles should be protected and no crocodile should be removed and every life is precious we're somewhere in the middle where we just want to keep that human crocodile interaction down to a minimum here in darwin harbour we just have a zero tolerance to animals moving in [Music] the old trusty 45 this is my insurance policy the parks and wildlife rangers concentrate their work around the 50 kilometer radius of dull outside that area people hire crocodile hunters like roger matthews he can sell you a skull or a skin and with the right permit and fence can deliver one of the animals as a pet he's looking great yeah zero maintenance we don't have any dogs short-legged waterproof dog yeah you put your hand in there guarantee it's coming off yeah if he gets a good enough grip little death roll or your arm clinging out of its shoulder eat your arm in front of you that is a cracker that is a big crocodile all these come off cattle stations um eating cattle this one come in five meters on the dot it's just immense maybe one of these gotcha pretty well it's all over his main clients are mining companies and cattle ranchers and it's brutal work so basically before our harpooning that's all some people think we got a like on a whale boat with a big grenade tipped harpoon but this is all it is and you're on the front of the boat basically at night and it's just a case of bang and once that goes into the crocodile just pull our stick back out throw it in and it's it's a case of bringing it in like a big fish what we got here we've harpooned a crocodile that's probably five meters long this guy would sink your boat in a heartbeat grab hold of it if not tear your aluminium just grab your boat twist and just fill you up with water it's been in one boat that sunk like that it was quite frightening matthew's clients don't pay him in cash but they let him keep what he catches he sells the skulls and the skins to collectors for thousands of dollars well a lot of people dislike what we do but generally they're armchair critics that don't fully appreciate what some of our graziers have got to put up with up here you know they're losing a cow a day you're losing fifteen hundred dollars ahead that's probably half a million dollars a year of of loss what we'd look for you'll see a patch that's smooth and you see the footprints where they drag themselves off in the soil and the size of the tail slide give you some indication of the size of the crocodile as well it's all part and parcel living in northern territory you know you're going to come across buffaloes you're going to come across pigs you're going to come across crocodiles hell some of the birds are even violent [Music] i'm 54 next week and like to be thinking i'm still doing it when i'm 84. you know just with a few more bigger heads hanging up around the place [Music] graham webb has been studying crocodiles for five decades and he owns a wildlife path where crocs are the main attraction what makes saltwater crocodiles valuable is really they're the least armoured of all the crocs so there's no bone in these scales in the belly and they have a large number of small scales and i guess this area here is wide so the artisans can make a really much prettier bag handbag selling crocodile skins to international companies who make clothing and accessories brings in a ton of money for the northern territory 75 million dollars in 2017 alone right now there are seven farms that serve the fashion industry and the french luxury brand hermes is building what will be the largest able to hold up to 50 000 crocodiles animal rights groups started to protest the croc farms earlier this year they say that it's inhumane to breed these reptiles to make handbags while the owner of the largest farm declined our interview request webb says that the best way to protect crocs in the long term is to harvest them now there's a couple hundred people employed full time in the industry but many more in flow on effects and the conservation credentials are huge because very few other places have been able to take a predator and bring it back to their original numbers and have the public put up with it so i i don't have a problem with that it doesn't make any difference to the crocs there's plenty of crocs now you

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Id: h2yKqcCIRnY

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 10 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/axelfreed]

Those Northern Territory flooded plains are scary as fuck. Imagine being dropped there.

[u/Pardusco]

The huge number of feral pigs certainly helps them if they can make it past the hatchling stage