As the world counts down to New Year’s Eve, in the Northern Territory a different kind of count has just wrapped up. Park rangers have released their annual saltwater crocodile tally of how many crocs have been captured and removed from management areas into nearby rivers and croc farms, aimed at keeping waterholes safe for visitors.
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00:00Powerful cascading waterfalls of crystal clear fresh water, the crown jewels of Northern
00:08Territory National Parks and an attractive food source for crocodiles.
00:15The crocodiles are very territorial animals and the reason that they would be in a plunge
00:19pool like this is because of the fish and the food source that is available.
00:24At the start of each wet season, rangers close off these swimming holes to the public and
00:29re-rig crocodile traps.
00:31Critical work that's not for the faint hearted.
00:34They're just an aluminium cage and they've got a trap door on the front.
00:40We bait them usually with a couple of nice pieces of feral pig and if a crocodile does
00:47go in there and grab the bait then it drops the door at the rear of the trap.
00:52NT government data shows rangers removed nearly 260 saltwater and freshwater crocodiles from
00:59management areas in 2024.
01:02Of those, 19 were from swimming holes in Lichfield National Park, nearly three times as many
01:08as were caught in the same area last year.
01:11The biggest I think was 3.65 metres which is a large animal and even a couple of the
01:17other saltwater crocodiles which were about 2.8 or 2.9 metres, they're large animals.
01:23It's spectacular waterfalls like this that draw hundreds of thousands of tourists to
01:28the Northern Territory every year.
01:31But without the work of rangers, these popular swimming holes would all but certainly be deadly.
01:37Just last year, a tourist swimming here at Wongai Falls was bitten on the back by a small crocodile.
01:43Since that time we've reviewed the croc management plans for the area.
01:47We review all of our processes to make sure that we're doing things as best we can.
01:52Life-saving work, balancing tourism with the natural environment.