“Maybe we should address the fact that stupid kids and, more important stupid parents that let kids, swim in waters where these creatures live.”
So no swimming in Australia then?
You from California or something? Unless you are willing to accept that on half a continent that nobody can swim, your answer is simply wrong. There is nothing wrong in the slightest to kill the living hell out of large numbers of them in areas that the humans want to use.
What is the -actual- argument that if crocs want that stream, that we should just accept it and go away? Explain why the animal has some mystical primacy over humans. Some beaches for swimmers there have shark nets. And some sharks die in them. So what?
They are like swimming versions of rattlers in the west, or pigeons in cities. You couldn’t eradicate the species if you even wanted to.
What happened to a little common sense? Set aside a few rivers rarely used by people, far from population enters and let crocs exist there. Make sure everyone knows. But then vigorously attack them in the areas that people wish to use. Protecting those areas we want would already take a huge effort, and still never achieve absolute safety. So im not sure why we can’t kill them there, and increase safety by a fair amount.
Some estuarine swampland up in the remote Northern Territories of Australia is hardly “half the continent.” Most of Oz, outside of the tropical north, is so arid that the only crocs people see are either in a zoo, or those cheap plastic shoes that kids wear.