INVASION OF THE CROCODILES - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 245

It is important to recall that crocodiles are regarded with no such veneration by
some clans, and that members of the Munyuku clan of the Yolngu hunt them and
collect their eggs for food. Before commercial hunting was banned, they used to
hunt crocodiles for skins which they traded for tobacco, meat, sugar, and so forth.
However, unlike 'balanda' (white settlers), they did not just skin and discard the
crocodile, but also cooked and ate the meat (ibid.; Quammen, 2003: 193-194). To
date, traditional use of crocodiles by Aboriginal people is provided for under
Section 122 of the Territory Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act, and they are
not bound by hunting regulations or seasons. This right was confirmed by a
decision of the High Court (Yanner vs Eaton) when Murrandoo Yanner's right to
spear two crocodiles in the Gulf of Carpentaria off Queensland, and share the meat
with his clan, was confirmed in 1999. This kind of traditional use is not regarded
as a threat to crocodiles (Horrigan and Young, 1999; Leach et al ., 2009: 6, 15).
In response to a series of attacks over 12 months in 1979/80, the conservation
authorities in Northern Territory responded with an 'incentive-driven conservation
strategy'. After having Australia's saltwater crocodiles reclassified from the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Appendix 1
(no trade) to Appendix II (controlled trade) in 1985, ranching (the collection of
crocodile eggs from the wild for captive raising) was encouraged. Crocodile farmers
paid landowners for permission to harvest wild eggs from their land under quota,
and in 1987 the export of skins began. From 1994, landowners with crocodiles but
no nesting grounds could benefit from a 'wild harvest' quota of wild crocodiles.
Problem crocodiles - that is, those which have attacked or tried to attack humans,
or which are judged a threat to human safety or productivity in management areas
- are killed and sold for skin and meat, or captured and used as breeding stock in
crocodile farms (Leach et al ., 2009: 3, 14).
Crocodile farming to supply the hide trade took off in Australia in the 1980s
and is now a major industry in northern Australia. Both captive and wild crocodiles
attract considerable national and international tourism to the region. Wild
crocodiles are fed from tourist launches, yielding sensational images of big croco-
diles leaping out of the water - notably the headline-grabbing image of 'Brutus'
photographed on the Adelaide River in July 2011 (Dillon, 2011). Since protection,
crocodile populations have rebounded, and for anyone born after the 1950s, it
would seem as if crocodile numbers are unprecedentedly high. Crocodiles are
dispersing in search of new living areas, moving upstream along rivers and streams
into accessible freshwater habitats, and along the coast into what wildlife managers
regard to be more marginal habitats.
Space and place
The spatial dimension is central to the concept of ecological invasions, yet
inextricably bound up with time. To be labelled an invasive alien species, a species
must be judged to have arrived from a region thought sufficiently distant (or
perhaps ecologically different) to qualify as a 'non-native'. The question is, how