00:00 In Australia's far north, even these troublesome saltwater crocodiles have a home, as efforts
00:06 to conserve the reptiles pay off.
00:08 Jess Grills helps tourists get up close to the creatures at this park near Darwin.
00:13 We have got 47 of them in this river.
00:15 The majority of them again are wild caught, so they've all been problematic out in the
00:19 wild, causing grief, too close to human life.
00:22 Some of them were cataleters, so they've all just been taken out of the wild, brought into
00:26 parks like this.
00:27 They do come in here to paradise, they get fed on a daily basis.
00:30 But people and crocs weren't always happy neighbours.
00:33 In the 20th century, the creatures were driven to the brink of extinction.
00:37 When the demand for their skin to make fashion leather came up, everyone thought that was
00:42 great, they could get rid of the crocodiles and get paid to do it, so it was a win-win
00:46 situation.
00:47 It wasn't until the 1960s that people were starting to realise that crocodiles were being
00:53 depleted all over the place in the wild.
00:56 We estimate the population had been reduced by like 98% or something.
01:01 There were maybe 3,000 animals left, but of that, probably less than 500 adults.
01:10 After government protections in the 1970s, crocodile numbers began to rise, but so did
01:15 attacks.
01:16 Croc expert Graham Webb says crocodile tourism, the harvesting of wild eggs for use in leather
01:21 farms and blunt messaging on safety have helped prevent colds, allowing numbers to soar.
01:27 But it's been really a raging success story.
01:30 Now when we look back, our populations are almost fully recovered, if not fully recovered.
01:35 There's maybe 100,000 crocodiles now.
01:38 It's about $100 million a year in turnover, you know, with everybody.
01:44 It extends out into Aboriginal communities and it helps the tourist industry here.
01:49 So we've made them an asset to the Northern Territory rather than a liability.
01:54 With crocodile populations returning to pristine levels, a key hurdle for the region now is
01:59 to avoid complacency around the dangers of crocodiles and their habitats.
02:04 The biggest challenge is to maintain that public support for very large numbers of saltwater
02:10 crocodiles.
02:12 And as I said, like in 1979 when I started working with crocodiles, there were very few
02:18 large ones.
02:19 Now the population is dominated by large crocodiles and they're the ones that cause the problems
02:25 with people.
02:26 For Grylls, admiring the hulking predators up close builds respect and ensures a balance
02:32 between the scaly locals and their potential human prey.
02:36 I was in mining and then I was a mother and now I'm a crop keeper.
02:43 Because crocodiles do look at humans as a food source, they do seem terrifying, but
02:48 if you respect them and their territory, I don't think that they would be as terrifying.
02:54 I don't think that they've got a very bad rap with their name, which I think is very
02:58 unfair on them because at the end of the day, they've been here for millions of years and
03:02 we've been here for not as much.
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