KOTA KINABALU: \u00a0Loss of habitat and lack of large preys on which large crocodiles feed are probably among the reasons why crocodile attacks might have increased in Sabah.
\nProf\u00a0Benoit Goossens, a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Special Survival Commission\u00a0said while killing a few crocodiles in an area could provide a feeling of safety to the users of the river, new crocodiles could replace them and the danger persists.
\nThe director of Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC) said there is definitely a need for more awareness in those areas with high concentration of crocodiles by holding\u00a0workshops for\u00a0local communities, and plantation workers who fish along the Kinabatangan river.
\n\u201cTo me, the factors causing the human-crocodile conflict are habitat loss and a lack of large preys (on which large crocodiles feed) such as bearded pigs following the African Swine Flu outbreak. Large crocodiles which\u00a0attack human are usually feeding on large preys such as pigs and deers.
\n\u201cUntil the population of wild pigs comes\u00a0back, we advise people to avoid bathing in the main rivers where crocodiles are present, and avoid fishing by\u00a0the riverbanks for long hours, because crocodiles are ambush hunters,\u201d he told Bernama.
\nRecently Sabah Deputy Chief Minister, Datuk Seri Bung Moktar has suggested that Sabah\u00a0issues permit for controlled hunting of crocodiles to address the reptile\u2019s large population in the state.
\nBung Moktar, the Kinabatangan MP\u00a0and Lamag assemblyman also urged the state government to create a rule or regulation on the culling and commercial harvesting of crocodiles, similar to what has been carried out in Sarawak.
\nHe made the call following the\u00a0death involving a woman who was attacked by a crocodile in Kinabatangan district on July 30.
\nOn Sept 11, a\u00a0search and rescue (SAR) team found the head of a missing person, who was believed to have been attacked by a crocodile while trying to cross Sungai Seguntur at a squatter area near Taman Kenari, Sandakan\u00a0on Sept 9, the latest of human-crocodile conflict case in the state.
\nGoossens\u00a0said DGFC has carried out a state-wide survey in 2019-2020 for Sabah Wild Department for a Non-Detrimental Findings (NDF) study.
\nDGFC is a collaborative research and training facility set up at the Lower Kinabatangan Sanctuary and managed by Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) and Cardiff University.
\nHe said the DGFC study was mainly to assess whether sustainable, legal commercial harvest would not be detrimental to the state population of crocodiles.
\n\u201cThe results of our study suggest that in the last 20 years there has been no substantial evidence of an increase in the overall population size of crocodiles in Sabah and is unlikely to be the determining factor in any increased report of human-crocodile conflict.
\n\u201cThe result of the NDF also falls above the threshold demonstrating that a harvest (even controlled hunting) would be detrimental to the population of crocodiles in Sabah.
\n\u201cThe only sustainable harvest of crocodiles would be in the Kinabatangan River, allowing a harvest of a maximum of five adults per year in that river,\u201d he said adding that other rivers in Sabah, any harvest would be detrimental to the crocodile population.
\nCurrently, the saltwater crocodile is a protected species in Sabah and in 2016, Malaysia transferred the status of the saltwater crocodile from Appendix I to II, with wild harvest restricted to the State of Sarawak and a zero quota for wild specimens for other states in Malaysia, including Sabah.
\n— BERNAMA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KOTA KINABALU: \u00a0Loss of habitat and lack of large preys on which large crocodiles feed are probably among the reasons why crocodile attacks might have increased in Sabah. Prof\u00a0Benoit Goossens, a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Special Survival Commission\u00a0said while killing a few crocodiles in an area could provide a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":15386,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15385","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-local-news"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15387,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15385\/revisions\/15387"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}