Bob Katter blasts ‘entitled, inner-city wokies’ after tourist was snatched by a crocodile near Cooktown in far north Queensland – as MP demands cull of the deadly reptiles

Bob Katter has slammed ‘inner city imbeciles’ and ‘ignorant wildlife activists’, warning they will have blood on their hands if they continue to block his calls for a rapid cull of crocodiles in the north of the country.

The MP’s attack comes after a 40-year-old NSW man was killed by a crocodile near Cooktown, in far north Queensland, as his horrified family looked on.

The man was fishing with his wife and children on the banks of the Annan River, about 320km north of Cairns, when he fell into the muddy water at about 2.10pm on Saturday and never surfaced.

It is believed he was taken by a 4.5-metre-long male saltwater crocodile that lives in that part of the waterway. called ‘Crocodile Bend’ by locals – and dragged to the bottom of the river.

Extensive searches by police and emergency services have so far yielded no results. His traumatised family remain in Cooktown as the investigation continues.

Mr Katter, whose constituency covers much of North Queensland, described the incident as a tragedy but stressed the killer crocodile should never have been allowed to remain so close to a local community.

He blamed “goodwill in the south” for allowing the deadly reptiles to grow “completely unchecked” and terrorise waterways in the state’s north, warning that more lives would be lost if numbers were not brought under control.

“This is an unmitigated tragedy: a man has been killed by a crocodile in front of his beloved wife and two young children,” he said.

‘His widow lost her husband and their children now have to grow up without a father.

‘And all because these arrogant, backward idiots from the inner city – surrounded by concrete canyons and colossal buildings – think they know more about crocodiles than the people who live here.

‘Those wokies, they tell us not to kill crocodiles – well, that’s just crazy.

“They think the life of a crocodile is worth more than the life of a human. What a disturbing loss of human values.”

“You big city wokies, you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re the ones responsible for this attack – it’s not the crocodile – it’s you.”

Crocodiles were granted protected species status in Australia in 1971, while their numbers were declining alarmingly as they were hunted almost to extinction

But populations have since recovered, with an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 crocodiles now living in Queensland’s waterways.

Mr Katter, who has been calling for a cull for years, said the continued growth of Queensland’s crocodile population was pushing the prehistoric predators ever closer to the region’s major cities.

“Crocodiles are incredibly dangerous and there is an incredible lack of awareness about how many of them we have here,” he said.

‘A mother crocodile lays about 60 eggs a year and the numbers are explosive.

‘For thousands of years the indigenous people of Australia kept the population in check, but now these ignorant wokies have thrown the entire ecosystem out of balance.’

Not everyone agrees and the incident led to a fierce battle over the fate of the suspected killer crocodile.

According to Cooktown conservationist Beau Peberdy, the reptile is well known and loved by locals.

“This is an animal that everyone knows around here,” he said. “He’s been in that part of the river for at least 20 years and you can often see him on the bank with two females.

‘Many people are now concerned that he was shot because he ate something in his natural habitat without knowing what it was.’

He said the large male was at least 40 years old and would have jumped at anything to slip into the river.

“If you fell into the water and he was on the other side of the river, you wouldn’t even have time to break the water, let alone get out,” he said.

“There’s nothing you can do.”

Mr. Peberdy said he opposed any suggestion of a cull and said most of the crocodiles in Queensland (about 80 percent) were in the sparsely populated areas around Cape York and were unlikely to come into contact with humans.

Police have not yet confirmed where in New South Wales the tourist taken by the crocodile is from or the ages of the victim’s children.

The fishing spot, where the man was probably dragged away by the crocodile, is a known habitat for the reptiles.

A Cooktown resident claimed the crocodile associated humans with food because locals fed it roadkill further upstream.

“People throw a dead animal in the water for it to eat. It could have been sitting there 15 feet under water waiting for food,” a Cooktown resident told the Cairns Post.

‘We’ve had a little rain, so the bank is soft. Even if he wasn’t at the edge, the bank could still go under him.

“It’s just terrible and everyone is with the family. It’s unthinkable to see something like this happen before your eyes.”

Police declined to comment on suspicions that people in the area were feeding crocodiles.

“While the circumstances of this case have not yet been confirmed, we remind everyone that Cooktown is known as ‘Croc Country’ and urge everyone to be safe by practicing ‘CrocWise’ behaviour,” a spokesperson for the Queensland Department of the Environment said.