Indonesian island becoming crocodile attack capital of the world

Crocodile encounters barely make the news in Indonesia but are on the rise. Photo / Getty Images

Rozi was washing off the grime left over from his shift in the tin mine when a crocodile sunk its teeth in and threw him backwards, dragging him into the water.

It drove him beneath the pontoon he was sitting on - but not before he caught hold of a dangling rope.

“I thought to myself, if I let the rope go, I will be dead.”

The 54-year-old miner, nursing his now hollow calf on the floor of his ramshackle home, is one of the lucky ones.

His dice with death is increasingly common on Bangka Island, an epicentre of rising rates of attacks in Indonesia, fast becoming known as the saltwater crocodile attack capital of the world.

Crocodile encounters here barely make the news, compared with in Australia, where rates are falling and skirmishes rare.

On Bangka, the rash of killings is almost entirely man-made. Wildcat tin mining has left the landscape potted with craters that are now full of floodwater.

Grinding poverty forces locals to bathe and even wash their chicken meat in the murky pools where crocodiles are forced to live, with their natural habitat shrinking elsewhere.

As the crocodile’s jaws remained tightly clamped around Rozi, he managed to cling on for deal life to the pontoon - and did something quite extraordinary.

He used what little energy he had left to chant. In a desperate attempt to soothe the reptile and attract attention, he recited the prayer of repentance delivered by Yunus when he was swallowed by a whale in the Quran. It worked.

“It calmed down… then my nephew came in a panic and punched the crocodile’s head,” Rozi said.

“But its skull was too thick, so it didn’t work. ‘Bring a screwdriver!’, I shouted. He did, but again he mauled its head. ‘Not the head, the eyes!’ I told him. So he stuck the screwdriver on one of its eyes and finally, it released its bite.”

Rozi was hospitalised for three months as doctors fought to repair his leg in a series of operations.

Indonesia sees almost 10 times more saltwater crocodile attacks than any other country.

Researchers estimate that, since 2014, at least 478 people have been killed here and another 531 injured by the formidable predators – which can grow beyond seven metres and weigh more than 1000kg, making them the world’s largest reptile.

With reporting patchy, these numbers are almost certainly an underestimate, yet they dwarf figures elsewhere – next in the crocodile attack “league table” is Malaysia with 180 incidents, followed by India with 112 and the Solomon Islands with 111.

“Every single month I hear cases of attacks,” said Endi Riadi, head of the Alobi Wildlife Rescue and Conservation Centre on Bangka Island, some 800km north of Jakarta. “These human-crocodile conflicts are becoming more and more frequent.”

This is in contrast to Australia, famous for shark and crocodile attacks splashed across the news, and home to the late Steve Irwin who made his fortune and fame chasing the reptiles for TV.

“Here in Northern Australia, we have the largest numbers of saltwater crocodiles, vastly more than Indonesia,” said Brandon Sideleau, a crocodile specialist at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, who tracks attacks globally.

“But attacks are very rare… although some conflict is almost inevitable, we haven’t had a fatal attack since 2018.”

Crocodile incidents have increased in Indonesia. Photo / Getty Images

He added that incidents in Indonesia, however, have “increased exponentially each year since 2011″.

On Bangka – where 91 incidents and 40 deaths have been reported since 2016 – conflicts are often close to areas where tin mining is extensive, according to a report this month by Garda Animalia, an Indonesian conservation media agency.

The island, home to about one million people, has some of the richest tin deposits in the world; by some estimates, 80 per cent of workers here are involved in the sector and illegal activity is rife.

But decades of exploitation have left a mark. Not only have forests been decimated, but the landscape is littered with “kulongs”, gaping former mining craters now flooded with water.

“In the context of tin mining, humans are not only encroaching into crocodiles’ area but are also creating a new potential habitat for crocodiles in the form of former open mining pits,” said Garda Animalia. Many of these craters are close to villages and homes.

Saltwater crocodiles – which, despite their name, thrive in brackish wetlands and freshwater rivers as well as salty seawater – are drawn to these pits looking for prey including fish, frogs and lizards. Occasionally they find people instead.

Indonesia suffers from natural habitat destruction not just from tin mines, but also palm oil plantations and sand mining.

“All of these industries are associated with increased crocodile attacks,” Sideleau said.

“Of course, poverty is also a factor,” he added. “As well as using rivers for livelihoods, a lot of people wash themselves or their clothes in them, where they can get attacked.”

Like Dedi, a former miner with a rhythmic accent.

“It was just after sunset, I went to the kulong to take a bath,” he told The Telegraph. “Suddenly [a crocodile] tried to attack my face. I dodged it and fell down.

“The second attack hit my thigh. This was from its jaw, this from the fangs, and this was clawed by its tail,” the 45-year-old told the Telegraph, gesturing at the swollen, yellowish wounds covering his right leg. “[Its body] was as bulky as a big water jug, I bashed it with my towel and it began to chase me. It came ashore, I ran about 100 metres fully naked.”

For both Dedi and Rozi, their encounters – in 2023 and 2020, respectively – are tinged with a hint of inevitably.

“Half a month after my incident, a woman was attacked while cleaning chicken meat. She didn’t survive,” said Rozi, grimacing as he limped around the kitchen helping his wife prepare syrupy black coffee. “When her body was found, the legs and arms were already detached. Only the torso remained.”

But he sees few signs that an end to such attacks is within reach.

“As a victim of crocodile attack, and as an ex-miner, the situation is dilemmatic,” Rozi said. “On one side, the mine affects their habitat. But on the other hand, people rely on the money it provides. That’s where things become difficult. If the authorities catch us killing the crocodile, we are told that we break the law, but we want them to be moved away.”

Saltwater crocodiles are a protected species in Indonesia, but locals often kill them after an incident – both to stop the predators from attacking again and because many believe that allowing the reptiles to be moved to a new spot is a bad omen for the village.

“We have a skilled team who catch crocodiles with a hook, rope and their bare hands and bring them to our wildlife rescue centre,” said Alobi’s Riadi. “But many locals don’t want us to. They want to catch and kill.”

But the rescue centre is also overflowing, and with little funding, it’s unable to expand to cater to more crocodiles.

Sideleau said other strategies can help mitigate human-crocodile conflict. Raising awareness about the risks of attacks is a good place to start – in the last five years, the East Nusa Tenggara region has seen a sharp drop in incidents, which may be linked to an education campaign for locals and officials in crocodile management.

Otherwise crocodile exclusion enclosures – barriers which prevent the reptiles from accessing certain parts of a river – have proven effective in Sri Lanka.

“But I think as long as mining is happening at scale and damaging the environment and the crocodile habitats, this very huge conflict is going to continue,” said Riadi. “That is the major cause, so unless we solve it the problem will not go away.”

Back at home in Telak village, one of the most heavily mined areas of West Bangka, Rozi restlessly shifts from a plastic chair to the cold floor as he tries to find a comfortable position for his injured leg.

“The point is, the crocodiles’ habitat is disturbed,” he said. “Around 1997-1998 was the last time it was safe to go into the water carelessly. Now, even the old mining sites are infiltrated by the crocodiles.

“There are more than 10 incidents in this village alone… the first case that happened [here] was fatal,” Rozi added, pausing. “Wanda was his name, the body has never been found to this day.”