CROCODILE ‘harvesting’ is a better way of saying crocodile hunting. There is money in the meat, it tastes like chicken according to gourmet chefs, and the skin sells well in the form of branded handbags, etc.
Every time I mention this subject to friends of the environment or green movement, I get a black eye. But I’ve so far managed to survive their attacks, dum spiro spero or agi idup agi ngelaban.
If all goes well, after September this year, they will know what I have been meaning to convey to the public: it is vital to pull the crocodiles from one Appendix in the protection act to another Appendix, in order to reduce human deaths in the rivers.
From the papers this week, I read about the government’s proposal to allow the harvesting of 500 crocodiles and 2,500 eggs every year. Good news for this year. This proposal has been lying on the shelves gathering dust for the past five long years. By the time this proposal is seriously considered at all, those eggs would have hatched, and no sooner can we say Jack Robinson and they would have developed into hungry papa and mama Crocodylus porosus, ready to engage the humans trespassing on their territory.
In order for anyone to be legally licensed to hunt the crocodiles and collect their eggs and deal with them commercially, the status of the species called Crocodylus porosus must first of all be changed. Now the crocs are on a pedestal on Appendix I of the Washington Convention or as it is elegantly called the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites). The proposal is to downgrade that status, from Appendix I to Appendix II – to do away with the ironclad protection.
I’m looking forward to the day when the Crocodylus porosus will be properly placed. Only then will I hold my tongue.
Then, catch a croc if you can; eat its meat and/or sell its skin for the manufacture of branded handbags for the wives of the rich and the famous.
The proposal is good news for a change. But I am not sure if it will see the light of day come September this year when the 17th meeting of the parties to the Treaty meet. There is a formidable lobby from foreigners and the local animal lovers who think that allowing crocodile hunting in Sarawak would affect the crocodiles in other locations. Who cares about what can happen to those crocodiles in other locations? Isn’t Sarawak for Sarawakians?
According to the wildlife office, there are some 12,000 to 13,000 crocs lurking in our rivers and, to me, enjoying the protection of an international law which discriminates against the humans. Our legislators in 1998 had managed to bind us hand and foot when they approved the insertion of the Cites provision into the local Wild Life Protection Ordinance. But the programme was successfully carried out, they did not know how to wriggle out of the clutches of Cites before the crocodiles grew in huge numbers and are now posing a danger to humans. The above are figures of an educated guess. In Sarawak, both the crocodiles and humans are competing for fish and prawns; the crocs want them for breakfast, lunch and dinner, while the humans catch the fish and prawns for sale. If there is excess of the catch, that’s for the family dinner. That does not eat into the amount of the next BR1M.
Competition can end in a fight and in the event of a clash, it is the human who will lose. The duel is not on an even playing field at all. In the water there is no hope for a human to win. Only a few lucky ones have survived to tell the tale. A revenge attack is not allowed until the relative gets permission from the Wild Life warden and permission will be given if you can identify the murder suspect.
I have attended a number of seminars and talks on the importance of crocodiles and have been told that they are useful in the rivers – they eat the cats thrown to the rivers and thereby clear the waterways. I have never thrown a cat into a river – have you?
It is often said by the scientists that crocodiles do not attack humans any old how; when they do, it would be a case of a mistaken identity. No intention to kill or cause bodily harm – no mens rea, as criminal lawyers say.
The presumption is that it is an accident. When a man dies during the ‘accident’, the coroner finds cause of death as ‘by drowning’.
I used to argue with these scientists during seminars about too many conflicts between humans and crocodiles in Sarawak and to say something must be done immediately to reduce those conflicts such as by doing away with the legal protection. They put my head underwater and would not allow me to breathe rationale into their intellectual heads. As a result, I never got invited to such seminars again. The real endangered species are the homo sapiens in Sarawak. I used to talk ad nauseam about the former losing war to the crocs. I have been dismissed as being unscientific.
I am not a scientist, that’s my problem. Whenever I write in my column, I get the backlash, and on Facebook the animal lovers do not love me, no more. Still the fact is that many humans in Sarawak live by rivers and depend on water for a living; they are the endangered species, not the town dwellers or the environmentalists in their air-conditioned offices.
How often do they go in small boats, fishing or wading in shallow waters in the 48 rivers infested with the beasts?
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