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By the late 1960s, hunting had reduced the number of saltwater crocodiles in Australia鈥檚 Northern Territory to around 500. Since then, a pioneering research and conservation programme has brought about a dramatic recovery. Today around 70,000 wild saltwater crocodiles live in the region. How do you persuade people to conserve dangerous animals that can kill cattle and even people? Grahame Webb, who has been working to conserve the animals for 30 years, thinks it鈥檚 possible only if you give people an incentive to tolerate them 鈥� such as by allowing safari hunting. He tells Emma Young about his experiences with Australia鈥檚 most notorious predator

What do you find so appealing about crocodiles?

People often ask whether I love crocodiles. The answer is no. But I admire them greatly. The more you work with them, the more you start to appreciate that they are tough, tenacious survivors. They have horrific fights with each other in which arms and legs are ripped off in swamps full of bacteria, yet they heal and survive. Their populations have a remarkable ability to recover if they are given an opportunity.

Have you ever been attacked?

I have been attacked a few times but only bitten once in the field. We were inspecting croc nests. We walked into a nest through dense cane grass, in water up to our knees, and I was feeling around in the water trying to find the female. Then I felt her right at my feet under the water. I turned and yelled out to the others just as she grabbed me by the leg and gave it a good shake. She left a series of punctures and one wound opened up. They stitched it up in hospital but it got badly infected and took a few months to heal. The bite didn鈥檛 really affect me 鈥� it was probably long overdue.

Before about 1980 the females were so wary that they never defended their nests. I cringe when I think about the way we used to work with crocodiles in the early days. We would dive into rivers and untangle lines and nets to ensure a trapped croc didn鈥檛 drown. We would wade in swamps looking for their nests and even swim down croc channels in the swamps. The surviving crocs were wary then, but few are wary today and nest defence has become more common. They have bitten into the floats on helicopters and one even climbed into a helicopter once.

How bad did things get for saltwater crocodiles in Australia?

After the second world war, the demand for crocodile skin increased, and no one really cared about them. When I started researching saltwater crocodiles (above right) in 1973, you could fly all around the rivers in the NT [Northern Territory] and not see one large animal. You would wonder, can the populations ever recover? Few people cared when crocodiles were protected by law in 1971.

As crocodile numbers increased and they started eating people and cattle, things changed. By 1980, people in the southern cities were still talking about crocodiles as if they were an endangered species, but people in the NT were seeing more crocodiles than they had for 40 years. Things really came to a head in 1979 and 1980. We had two people killed, two badly mauled and a croc that started to tip over fishing boats just when the NT had started its tourism industry. It was a time of great anguish. For the population to really recover we needed much more time and much bigger crocodiles.

How did you deal with the public鈥檚 fears?

We went round teaching people about crocodiles, so everyone got familiar with the fact that crocodiles were recovering, and that they were big and dangerous animals. Crocodiles were removed from certain areas, like Darwin harbour, to reduce the probability of attacks. An embryonic crocodile farming industry was encouraged. We started a ranching programme: landowners could get permits to collect and sell wild eggs to farms, which incubated them and raised them for meat and skins.

We are right in the middle of the annual egg harvesting programme now. An egg is worth about $30, so with 50 eggs on a single nest that can bring in a lot of money. One remote Aboriginal settlement managed to generate nearly $200,000 from its crocodiles in one year. The big idea is to make crocodiles an asset by maximising the number of people in the NT who get their income from crocodiles.

Is that why you support starting safari hunting?

In a lot of cases, the willingness of landowners to put up with crocodiles depends on whether they can make money from them. The NT issues permits for a total of up to 600 crocodiles to be taken by landowners each year for meat and skins, in addition to 20,000 eggs. A landowner can get $400 for each crocodile, for its meat and skin, but a safari hunter could pay him $4000 for the same animal. You don鈥檛 have to be a rocket scientist to work out which is going to create the biggest incentive for him to look after his adult crocs.

Late last year, the Australian environment minister Ian Campbell said safari hunting of crocodiles would send the wrong message to the world. What do you say to that?

鈥淐onservation only works because some crocodiles are killed鈥�

That was one of the least innovative statements I鈥檝e heard in a long time. The NT has a pragmatic conservation programme which works only because some crocodiles get killed to provide landowners with incentives to tolerate them. One reason Campbell takes that position is that in forums such as the International Whaling Commission, Australia is highly protectionist. Already people are questioning the hypocrisy of opposing whale hunting but allowing the killing of kangaroos; next year it could be crocodiles too.

What don鈥檛 you know about crocodiles?

There are always new things to learn. When we started dealing with problem crocodiles in the 1970s, we tried relocating them. But we found that some would return from 100 kilometres away within a few months. They would even walk tens of kilometres over land to get back to where they were caught. We don鈥檛 yet understand how the homing process works, but we are learning rapidly. Twenty large crocodiles now have satellite tracking transmitters on them, and each day we鈥檙e learning more about their movements.

There are other mysteries. Once crocs get to 3 or 4 years of age and around 2 metres long, whether they stay in a particular river is determined by the number of crocs already there. The excess just disappear. Some turn up in different rivers and others have been sighted swimming past oil rigs in the Timor Sea. But where the majority go is unknown.