Culling Crocodiles.

[farri]

On Saturday 18/03/2017 Warren Hughs, from Cairns, North Queensland, became the latest victim of a Crocodile attack, while spear fishing! On the same day, a guy in his late teens, was attacked by a Crocodile when he jumped off the jetty, into the Johnstone river, at Innisfail, North Queensland.

 

Since Crocodiles were declared an endangered species, numbers have increased enormously and with new hatchings each year, the numbers will continue to increase! It`s no longer safe for anyone walking on the beaches or swimming, in the ocean, creeks or rivers, where Crocodiles are known to excist.

 

Is it time to start culling Crocodiles?

 

The red circle is where Warren was attacked.

 

[ATTACH]48120._xfImport[/ATTACH] The area of the Innisfail attack

 

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Frank.

 

[Cosmick]

Hi Frank.

 

People who live in Northern Australia live with Crocodiles. (Southerners only have to put up with Poodles). I lived up there for several years in my mid to late teens (used to be the bunny on the outside of the prawn net at Flying Fish Point in the 70's). I think many locals like the idea of living on the frontier and have a healthy respect for Crocs and Sharks and snakes and box jellyfish etc. But nature has to be managed, around Darwin considerable resources are utilised to control Crocs and if numbers are getting out of hand in populated areas then they have to be managed and by managed I mean whatever means to control the croc numbers. If the greenies complain, invite them to come up and pat a Croc, their paradigm will change very quickly.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Despite being a paid-up greenie I'm appalled at the stupid, broad brush approach to conservation in this country.

 

In 1970 I worked in Cairns with a Slovenian croc shooter who knew of a few remote rivers on the cape where he could find crocs. After croc hunting was banned it didn't take long for numbers to recover to plague proportions, yet bureaucratic inertia still protects them.

 

As I write this my ears are being assaulted by flocks of white cockatoos, as they decimate nearby crops. There are millions more of them since white fellas came.

 

They systematically destroy any tree I plant, yet they enjoy the same legal protection as the critically endangered Orange Bellied Parrot.

 

Australia should be exporting wildlife products where it can be done in a sustainable way.

 

 

[nomadpete]

The Kiwis got possums sorted. They recycle them into slippers. Nice warm slippers (all done in a friendly fuzzy humane way, of course).

 

And they also feed them to sheep. At least I hope that's how they make 'possum merino' wool.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

While we were in NZ my wife bought some super warm possum fur socks. (We were told that polar bear fur and possum fur and are the only hollow fibres in nature.) A very strained period in Trans-Tasman relations was revived when I innocently asked the bloke whether they used wide combs.

 

 

[bexrbetter]

A few of you guys are actually talking about the growth of the power of animal libbers, including the complete takeover of the RSPCA, which, ironically, is what needs to be culled.

 

I'm a member of PETA myself, People Eating Tasty Animals.

 

 

[farri]

I`m caught between a rock and a hard place on culling! I see every living thing as an individual! it matters naught to the Croc that was shot, that there is an enormous amount of Crocs left, for it, it`s life has ended, on the other hand, I believe we humans have a right to protect ourselves from anything that threatens our survival, it`s what and how we choose to protect ourselves, that is the real issue.

 

Frank.

 

 

[facthunter]

They certainly are not endangered and have NO natural enemies. I've seen the "salties from 19,000 feet in the Timor sea, and they are very large." Crocadillus Johnstoni". Johnston River Croc is not so deadly. but still a threat Near lake Argyle they eat a lot of cattle, so that's a cost. Nature is not in balance as it once was until humans got involved in a way where the extinction of many species was and is happening, because of them ( Rhino's and Elephants Tigers etc) The crocs are a threat to people and pets and at some stage will have to be culled to achieve some control and safety for ordinary people. It is a question of WHEN does that point arrive and how is it done? They and other "PESTS" have to be controlled. Grasshoppers. Cane toads . March flies European wasps, Malaria carrying mosquitoes etc.. I used to sail catamarans on Fannie bay but wouldn't consider it today. I wouldn't even walk along the shoreline of Darwin at night near the Ski Club. Nev

 

 

[farri]

Being low tide, I went for a quick fly up the Mulgrave river this afternoon and it didn`t take me long to find a couple of big Crocs... They were both sitting on the bottom, in shallow water.... I estimated both of them to be over 3 mts long...Neither of those were the real big one, I see often, in that area...About half a kilometer away from one Croc, two guys in a tinny were casting lures.

 

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Frank.

 

[Old Koreelah]

Bit too close to home for me. The buggers are known to cover a fair bit of ground out of water, Frank.

 

 

[farri]

Yeah I know! but we choose to live here...Yesterday, I saw another big one a bit further up the river.

 

A couple of months ago our Granddaughter who lives with her husband and children here in a second house on the property, was on her way to work, at 7 am, got just up the road,spotted something up ahead on the side of the road, slowed right down thinking someone had hit a dog and just as she got to it, a Croc about 2 meters long, took off across the road in front of her and launched itself into the river.

 

My mate John Bennett lives in the first house to the right of the red circle....Every morning around 7 am John would walk with his 2 dogs, up the road past the red circle, to the boat ramp and back..... It`s quite possible the Croc had worked out, sooner or later it could get a meal there....John doesn`t walk the dogs that way any more.

 

Warren Huges was taken, while spearfishing, on Saturday the 18 th of March and on that weekend 2 dogs were taken by Crocs, off the the beaches north of cairns and a dog was taken from a paddock on the bank of the north Johnston river, yesterday afternoon.

 

It`s now got to a point where the well being of the Crocodiles is taking priority over the well being of the people!

 

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Frank.

 

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[Old Koreelah]

In the 70s my sister had a house a few km upstream of your place. We loved to go swimming in the river. Paradise.

 

 

[facthunter]

Sensibly, a culling program will start one day. I don't know how that day will be determined, but it will have to happen. They fear nothing. I don't like the taste of crock, and everyone who lives where they are available that I've met, agrees with my thoughts. Nev

 

 

[facthunter]

Because there aren't any at Mt ISA yet? Nev

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Thirty years ago we spent a few weeks at a mate's place near Adelaide River. it was the dry season, and his kids and ours (oldest was 6) would go swimming in the waterhole a few hundred metres from the homestead. They always took a couple of big, ugly dogs along. Years later I learned their function: the kids would chuck them in first and wait a few minutes to see if there were any crocs.

 

 

[spacesailor]

The next crock-cull will happen a couple of weeks after the next pollie gets eaten.

 

Any one willing to save a couple of ugly dogs, & use a ugly pollie.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[nomadpete]

OK, I have been around gulf country in the past. Sizable crocs could be found in billabongs over 60k inland. During the wet season, they wander a long way from rivers and ocean. Retreating water during dry season leaves them sitting in any unlikely bog hole.

 

I wouldn't let my kids hang around the local swimming hole unless I'd already gone spotlighting the night before (look for beady little red eyes). And thrown a mother-in-law or two in, just to be sure.

 

 

[spacesailor]

Please nomadpete,

 

Please leave muminlaw safe, There's plenty of ugly pollies available!,

 

spacesailor

 

 

[kgwilson]

At 7.5 billion and rising by 200,000 per day, humans are definitely not a threatened species either. We try culling ourselves in territorial disputes but even the loss of 50 million in the big dispute in the middle of last century hardly put a dent in the relentless growth. We now inhabit everywhere so have invaded every space originally populated with thousands of species, many of which are now extinct. What is the answer? I don't know but I am glad I won't be around to witness the apocalypse.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Good point, KG. Our species is not endangered by anything but our own folly. I'm dead against those charities which subsidise water supply wells in arid areas of Africa, etc. It has the same effect as artificial watering points in the Australian desert: overgrazing, erosion and destruction of the local ecosystem. The same applies to campaigns to eradicate tsetse flies which carry sleeping sickness; this has protected some areas from human encroachment.

 

One ray of hope: lots of marginal farming and grazing land in rich countries has been abandoned and is going back to nature as humans rush to live in big cities. Africa is also urbanising at a rapid rate, perhaps enough to save some species and ecosystems from extinction.

 

 

[spacesailor]

One charity gets up my nose, Poor Pierre, has been dying for his charity for years!, if he was payed even $5 for his "child-labor" appearance, he should be a millionaire.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[Yenn]

Don't think that the rush to live in the big cities doesn't apply to Australia. Our cities are growing madly and agriculture is being reduced, not least by coal mining.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Don't think that the rush to live in the big cities doesn't apply to Australia. Our cities are growing madly and agriculture is being reduced, not least by coal mining.

Constant economic change, Yenn. Australian farmers once had a protected market here and throughout the Commonwealth. The valley I grew up in (my pseudonym) is now almost empty. Where once the school bus picked up a heap of kids from each dairy farm, there are now abandoned houses, sheds or just the odd lonely, forgotten fruit tree. Beef cattle graze and forests grow back on land cleared the hard way by our recent ancestors.

 

Much is now owned by city people who sometimes come down for the weekend to rip and tear with their SUVs and motorbikes.

 

 

[spacesailor]

Anyone got some nice joints of Crock, I'll eat it, very bland taste.

 

Used to get a bit of Roo some time back but it dried up when the supermarkets started selling it, $15 a kilo.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[David2ayo]

2 crocs were having a discussion on the shore of Lake Burley Griffin. One, a monster, the other quite petite. The monster said, 'I can't understand it. We are the same age,

 

both came down in Larissa's handbag, but look at you! What are you eating?' The other replied, 'same as you - the odd politician stopping for a break on the shoreline'. 'So what do you do when you catch them?' 'Well, grab them, shake all the sh!t out of them, and gobble gobble gone!' 'Oh, for goodness sake! If you shake all the sh!t out of a politician there's nothing left!

 

David