Rampant Borneo crocodiles on the hit list
Authorities invite hunters to kill fierce Malaysian beasts, responsible for 27 grisly deaths since 2010
MALAYSIAN officials are hoping that grim tales of limp fishermen’s corpses wedged between the jaws of giant crocodiles will soon be no more after granting 45 licences to hunters.
“Those who have obtained their licences from us can start harvesting crocodiles in the wild,” said Engkamat Lading, a forestry department official in the eastern Sarawak region.
Most of the permits will only allow hunters to sell crocodile meat locally, but three people have applied for licences to export meat, skin or hatchlings under rules governed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), according to the Borneo Post, a local newspaper that carried the official announcement yesterday.
The hunters will not get any official support beyond the granting of the licence, said Lading, and the limited number of permits suggests that Sarawak will not yet be opening its jungles to troupes of croc-hunters.
While some crocodile species are endangered, Sarawak’s population is booming. In 2016, officials in Sarawak estimated that 27 people had been killed by crocodiles since 2010 and put the number of wild crocs at more than 12,000.
Among the region’s crocodiles is the giant saltwater crocodile, which at up to 20ft long and weighing around a ton is the biggest reptile on Earth and a scourge of beaches and rivers from India to Australia.
It is hoped that the granting of licences will allow for a thinning out of this so-called “problem” crocodile population but that the licensing system will ensure what Mr Lading called a “sustainable harvesting of the resource” and not a repeat of what happened in Australia up to the early Seventies, with “salties” hunted to near-extinction in the absence of regulations.
A subsequent ban on hunting has seen Australia’s saltwater crocodile numbers recover to the point where a national “crocwise” safety campaign attempts to warn the public of the dangers posed by the beasts, which now number around 100,000 in Northern Territory alone.
But the boom in crocodile numbers across northern Australia has led to controversial calls to allow trophy hunting along the lines of so-called safari hunts that take place across Africa and, as of yesterday, the limited hunting sanctioned in eastern Malaysia.
Papua New Guinea already grants some hunting permits to foreigners, but there is speculation that a change
‘Those who have obtained their licences can start harvesting crocodiles in the wild’
in the Malaysian rules could prompt Australia to change its laws.
Australian animal rights groups oppose the proposals, which proponents say would boost tourism revenue and generate income for Aboriginal communities, and could be managed alongside existing officially-sanctioned trapping or culling of problem crocodiles.
Australia also allows crocodile farming for the global skin trade.