home | news l

SmallWorld: The larger crocs are strong enough to snatch a horse or a water buffalo from the river bank

Nick Squires
from Adelaide River, Northern Territory

Tom Northrope hooks a chunk of meat on to a piece of string attached to a wooden pole and dangles it over the coffee-brown water.

Suddenly there’s an explosion of movement as a 9ft-long crocodile leaps from the river and lunges for the bait. With an audible snap and a swirl of water the meat – and the croc – are gone.

“We call that one Chainsaw,” Northrope says, preparing another titbit of flesh. “She’s big enough to take any one of us if she wanted to. The larger crocs are strong enough to snatch a horse or a water buffalo from the river bank.”

This is the Adelaide River in the Northern Territory, home to the world’s only jumping crocodiles.

It’s a huge hit with the tourists. On the day I visited, German, Dutch and Japanese visitors were wide-eyed with awe as crocodiles approached our flat-bottomed metal boat and came to within touching distance. Not that any of us were foolhardy enough.

This is one of the best places to see saltwater crocs in Australia, and the 100 mile-long Adelaide River is home to an estimated 5000, making it one of the most densely populated crocodile habitats in the world.

But now the federal government is considering a proposal by landowners and Aboriginal groups to allow rich safari hunters to shoot 25 crocodiles a year. The proposal is contentious because saltwater crocs were almost pushed to extinction by professional hunters until they received official protection across Australia in the early Seventies.

But the Northern Territory government says the scheme would bring in much-needed revenue for impoverished Aboriginal communities. It points out that cattle farmers and other landowners in the Territory are already allowed to cull up to 600 ‘problem’ crocs each year.

The crocs to be killed by overseas hunters would simply come out of this existing quota. Environmental groups, however, say that such trophy hunting behaviour belongs to a bygone era and is inappropriate for a species which was once almost wiped out by man. Nor are some of the locals too keen.

“It doesn’t take any skill to shoot a crocodile,” says Morgan Bowman, every inch the grizzled, bearded bushman and the owner of Hunter Safaris. “They lie around on the riverbank and you can get to within a few feet of them. They’ve been around for 200 million years, ever since the dinosaur age – why would anyone want to shoot them?”

While the debate continues, it may be some time before aspiring Crocodile Dundee types have the chance to bag themselves the world’s largest living reptile.

Source: Sunday Herald (Scotland)

Further information: culture issues page - includes news index and external links