Rapid breeding rate of crocs in NT waters blamed for attacks on Timorese residents

Rapid rates of breeding from Territory waters are being blamed for crocodile attacks on Timorese residents.

RAPID rates of breeding from Territory waters are being blamed for the heightened number of previously unheard of crocodile attacks on Timorese residents.

Revered crocodile researcher Grahame Webb says Australia has a moral obligation to reduce the numbers.

Saltwater crocodiles have also been seen killing native sea turtles in Timor Sea.

But the professor has ruled out a croc cull anytime soon.

“I don’t think that is the answer at all,” Prof Webb said.

“We need to know what the problem is, first of all, because there is no research into it.”

Research to debunk beliefs that deadly crocs are attacking about once every month in Timor-Leste and that half the attacks result in death of one of the seafaring people is the next step.

“All the circumstantial evidence suggests that the sharp increase in the rate of attacks in East Timor, which the Timorese consider to be due to troublemaker crocs just turning up there that they don’t consider one of their normal ones,” Prof Webb said.

“My personal opinion is that they could be spilling over from the Northern Territory.

“We basically put this hypothesis out because people are being killed and now as the good scientists we are trying to get the evidence we require to reject our hypothesis and if we can’t, there’s a good chance that’s what is happening.”

Prof Webb said other research he had been involved with suggested 60 to 70 per cent of juvenile crocodiles moved out of the rivers and were just “disappearing”.

“They weren’t coming back to other rivers and creeks. The number of them being lost in the areas, which they were breeding in is nowhere near the number that was arriving at other areas,” he said.

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“Nobody knows what goes on whether they’re heading out to sea and taken by predators or disappearing altogether.” But Prof Webb believes some of them are from Darwin Harbour and are swimming on from Melville Island.

While Prof Webb admits much of it remains anecdotal evidence, a pioneering DNA sampling program in 2019 found that the Australian breed had been crossing the 450km trek of sea to find a new home.