Giant reptiles kill humans, livestock but hunting illegal
A fatal attack on a fisherman in Queensland has intensified public debate on whether to legalise crocodile hunting in Australia.
The 60-year-old man was killed on Tuesday when his boat capsized on the Normanby River on Queensland's remote Cape York Peninsula while he and his wife were trying to fend off the crocodile as it moved in to attack them.
It is the latest in a series of attacks by the giant reptiles, which have reached almost plague proportions in some parts of northern Australia.
Last October a boy was snatched from a tent by a 4.2-metre crocodile as his family camped near the head of the Normanby River. Only the valiant efforts of another camper, Alicia Sorohon, who jumped on the reptile's head, saved the child.
No one knows the exact number of saltwater crocodiles, or 'salties', inhabiting Australia's far north, but since they became a protected species in the early 1970s after being hunted almost to extinction, the population has soared. Estimates vary from 50,000 to more that 100,000.
About 20 people have been killed by the man-eating saltie since l971 and many more injured.
