Crocodile attack on sleeping man triggers conservation row

By GREG ANSLEY


A 60-year-old grandmother and the man she saved from the jaws of a crocodile were recovering in a Cairns hospital yesterday as a row grew over the management of the giant reptiles in Queensland.

Alicia Sorohon leaped on to the head of the 4.2m crocodile after it snatched 34-year-old Andrew Kerr from a tent where he was sleeping with his wife and infant son at Bathurst Bay, in the remote far north of Cape York Peninsula.

The huge saltwater croc snapped Kerr's arm and leg before turning on the woman clinging desperately to its back, breaking her arm also and inflicting other wounds to her body.

The struggle ended when Sorohon's son, Jason, shot the crocodile.

The attack - unusual because of its ferocity from a species that usually relies on stealth - is being investigated by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, which believes the crocodile may have been attracted to the area by fish and food scraps left by recreational fishers.

But crocodile expert Mick Pitman, who recently fought a legal battle with wildlife star Steve Irwin over the rights to the name "crocodile hunter", yesterday warned that conservation programmes were putting more people at risk of attack.

Crocodile numbers have mushroomed since the species were protected about 30 years ago, and about 100,000 now roam across the north of Australia.

Last April, a crocodile grabbed 11-year-old Hannah Thompson as she was swimming at Margaret Bay, also on Cape York Peninsula.

She was saved by boat skipper Ray Turner, who dived on to the croc's back and gouged its eyes, forcing it to let Hannah go.

A teenager was killed the previous December in the Northern Territory, and two of his friends waited 22 hours in a tree until being rescued by helicopter.

And two years ago a German tourist swimming in a waterhole in the Northern Territory was killed.

Pitman said the fact that the crocodile left the water and attacked Kerr inside his tent showed that it had previously been involved in human contact, and proved the need for a new culling programme.

"We're 20 years behind everywhere else," he said.

"Even in Third World countries they put into practice sustainable wild harvesting of the animals to keep the population down."

Monday's horrific attack involved a group of friends from Brisbane, who were taking their annual holiday at a campsite they had visited for the past five years.

At 4am, the crocodile lunged through the door of the tent where Kerr, his wife Diana and their 3-month-old son Kelly were sleeping.

"I heard a thud and I got up and looked through the netting on the tent door," Diana Kerr told the Brisbane Courier-Mail.

"I saw this croc right there looking at us. I said 'there's a croc, Andrew'.

"He sat up and the croc just lunged at him.

"The croc was attacking and he was screaming 'get the baby, get the baby'.

"The croc had him by the legs and was dragging him out of the tent.

"I picked up the bassinet and I had hold of it with one hand and I had Andrew's hand with the other and the croc just ended up dragging us all outside the tent.

"I was just screaming 'Andrew, Andrew, Andrew'."

As the crocodile pulled Kerr towards the water, Sorohon leaped on to its head.

It dropped Kerr and grabbed Sorohon's arm.

While she struggled, her son Jason ran for his gun and shot the crocodile.

Alerted by an emergency beacon, Parks and Wildlife rangers shooting wild pigs nearby raced to the scene, took first aid measures and called the Royal Flying Doctor Service.