Northern Territory's Crocodile Population Suddenly Increases After Pushed to the Verge of Extinction

Saltwater crocodile population in the Northern Territory has rapidly increased since the species was nearly shot to the extent of going extinct 50 years ago. Presently, crocodiles are becoming bigger and edging nearer to urban centres.

(Photo : Getty Images)

Crocodile Population

Canopies have been covering a great secret in the hothouse blooms of the tropical north in Australia. Wildlife rangers took out a crocodile nest underneath, in January 2021. The finding was below 1 kilometre from the suburban fringes.

They discovered the nest at the edge of Palmerston which is a city of roughly 40,000 people, about a 15-minute journey south of Darwin.

Rangers in the Northern Territory normally see crocodiles on their patrols. The number of Saltwater crocodiles in the NT has increased from 3,000 to 100,000 in the past 50 years.

But the saltwater crocodile which is one of the planet's deadliest predators hasn't been recorded laying eggs within 50 km of the Northern Territory's capital city and this is the first time.

The discovery left Ian Hunt who is a crocodile ranger with the NT government perplexed. Hunt said: "It's really bizarre to find a nest up here ... It's real close."

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Migratory Crocodile 

A head crocodile researcher in the Territory whose name is Yusuke Fukuda is making effort to discover where the crocodile has come from. To solve the mystery, in his lab Fukuda collects a DNA sample from the hatchling.

 In a year, hundreds of crocodiles are stuck in Darwin Harbour, and Fukuda is working on a database that maps where they are from.

He says discovering the nest close to Palmerston is a cue the Top End's migratory crocodiles are making their way into new places.

"I think it means good crocodile breeding habitats are getting saturated. We might be finding more and more nests where we think they should not be, or where we do not think they would be," he says.

Park owner and croc expert at Crocodylus Park - a tourist attraction on the outskirts of Darwin - whose name is Grahame Webb directs attention to one of his largest crocodiles.

(Photo : Getty Images)

Decline in Population

"Crocodiles are predators, serious predators, and they've been preying on the most primitive of people all through human evolution," he says. Crocodiles, and events such as Webb's park croc cruise, are synonymous with the Territory.

But for a long time, it was very difficult to see a massive crocodile NT's wild.

Just 50 years ago, hunters took the lives of numerous saltwater crocodiles, as portrayed in this vision from the National Film and Sound Archive.

In the NT, hunting forced crocodiles to the verge of extinction. At the time, It was roughly calculated that from the time World War II ended, about 113,000 skins from crocodiles had been exported from the Northern Territory. It left the number of crocs teetering at a dangerously low 3,000.

But for decades, the Northern Territory's crocodiless have now been a species under protection. 

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