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Hungry crocs terrorise poor Malawian villagers
Maria Semu holds back tears as she tells how she lost her husband Ngalu to a crocodile -- another victim of growing conflict between man and beast in one of Africa's poorest countries.
Maria Semu holds back tears as she tells how she lost her husband Ngalu to a crocodile -- another victim of growing conflict between man and beast in one of Africa's poorest countries.
"He went fishing at the river to catch fish for supper but did not come back," she said beneath a tree in front of her simple mud hut.
A search party found some of his remains and a large crocodile lurking in the vicinity was shot by the local police -- but it dived into the water and they are not sure if they finished it off.
January is prime time for crocodile attacks on humans in Malawi. The females have spent much of the past three months guarding their nests so they enter the New Year ravenous.
And while there are no hard statistics, there are concerns that crocodile attacks are on the rise in this poor southern African country as swelling rural populations encroach on the reptile's habitat.
DEPLETED FISHERIES
Depleted stocks of wild fish -- a crocodile's first choice of food -- is seen as one factor behind attacks.
At a shabby outdoor market about 2 km (1.2 miles) from where Semu's husband was taken on the banks of the Shire river earlier this month, the smoked fish on display comes from neighbouring Mozambique, underscoring the dearth of fish in local waters.
"Over fishing is driving crocodiles to eat people," said Khalid Hassen, who knows crocs better than most people.
A professional hunter, Hassen has shot an astounding 17,000 crocodiles over the past 40 years in Malawi.
He once did it for commercial reasons -- sometimes shooting as many as 800 in a season for their skins -- but he now just shoots a few "because I feel I owe something to the communities where I got my start."
By this he means that he feels duty-bound to remove a few dangerous predators each year from the midst of poor villagers.
Hassen said he has always harvested crocodiles in a "sustainable" manner -- not hunting when they are nesting, not taking animals less than five feet (1.5 metres) in length -- and the meat he has provided to rural communities gives them some incentive to tolerate the big reptiles.
Hassen said no proper surveys of Malawi's crocodile population had been done but there was general agreement that the country has many.
Malawi has few lions and leopards left but because they are cold-blooded crocodiles require far less food than warm-blooded predators and so their population density is much higher.
