Should Australia cull more saltwater crocodiles?
Video clip at right: On January 3, 2025, BBC News televised a segment on Australia's saltwater crocodiles and calls to cull their numbers. There is also a discussion of the Northern Territory's new Crocodile Management Program.
The Issue at a Glance
What they said...'Many locals don't like the thought of man-eating animals brazenly cruising around where we live, play and work'
Cairns Post commentator Julian Tomlinson
'Education on coexistence with saltwater crocodiles is needed, not culling'
Ben Pearson of World Animal Protection Australian
On October 2, 2024, Queensland MP Robbie Katter criticised the Queensland government's moderate stance on crocodile culling and condemned the state's revised Crocodile Management Program as a 'load of croc'.
On 22 May 2024, Katter's Australia Party introduced the Crocodile Control and Conservation Bill 2024 into the Queensland Parliament. The bill called for crocodile culling in populated areas in Queensland and Indigenous-led crocodile trophy-hunting enterprises. On 1 July 2024, the Bill was ruled out of order and withdrawn.
The issue is far from resolved. There remain critics of the Queensland government's restrained crocodile management program
and of the management program recently adopted in the Northern Territory which allows the removal of 1,200 crocodiles a year.