Why the Crocodile Matters

It would be easy, having spent these chapters cataloguing the danger, to conclude that Africa would be safer with fewer crocodiles, or with none at all. Wrong on both counts. That conclusion is both ecologically mistaken and, as it happens, practically useless. The Nile crocodile is not a blight on the landscape to be scoured away. It is a keystone of the systems it inhabits, and the evidence is now clear that killing crocodiles does very little to stop crocodiles killing people. If the goal is fewer dead humans, culling is close to the worst tool available.

The keystone predator

As the apex predator of African fresh water, the Nile crocodile shapes the whole community around it. It keeps prey populations in balance and culls the sick and the weak. Its old nesting banks and basking sites structure the riverine habitat. In one of the quieter services of nature, crocodiles help maintain the fish stocks that people depend on, in part by preying on the predatory fish that would otherwise eat the young of the species people harvest. Remove the crocodile and the system does not simply become safer; it becomes poorer, less stable, and often less productive for the very people who share it. Poorer, not safer. A healthy crocodile population is a sign of a healthy river.