NORTH QUEENSLAND REGISTER (Townsville, Australia) 09 December 13 See you in a while, crocodile

Scientific support for the Queensland government’s crocodile management plan was welcomed by North Queensland based Senator Ian Macdonald.

“As Dr Adam Britton, from the Darwin based Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods, has said, crocodile conservation in Australia has been a victim of its own success,” Senator Macdonald said.

“The Labor state government for years refused to recognise the threat posed by the recovering crocodile population repopulating areas inhabited by humans, after they were declared a protected species,” he said.

Senator Macdonald has been agitating since 2005 for a definitive croc management program, specifically to save human lives as the crocodile population encroaches further into inhabited areas each year.

“Nobody, least of all Campbell Newman or myself, is advocating the wholesale slaughter of crocodiles as was done in the first century after European settlement.

“Although this was effective as a way of protecting humans from crocodile attacks, it decimated the crocodile population to a dangerously low level.

“The protection of crocodiles has reversed this decline and now it is the human population which is in danger, as the Darwin Institute has reported.

“What Mr Newman has done, therefore, is institute a management plan which will buffer the human population from the dangers posed by predatory crocodiles with a combination of removal, barriers and other techniques which is exactly what we need to ensure safety.”

“You can’t live with crocodiles, that is a romantic fantasy. You can only die with them.

“I am delighted that common sense has prevailed.”
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