To the Edge of the Range

Lay a finger on India's east coast and drag it east across the map, and it will not leave saltwater-crocodile country for thousands of miles: down through the Indonesian islands, across the whole of New Guinea, out past the Solomons, and only finally running out of animal somewhere near Vanuatu, deep in the Pacific. No other crocodilian comes close to that reach, and few predators of any kind do. The saltwater crocodile holds the widest range of any crocodile alive. Nothing is close. This chapter walks the far end of it, where the arc thins out to its last outposts, and where, at the very edge, it is quietly closing.

New Guinea and the great rivers

New Guinea, the huge island split between Indonesian Papua in the west and independent Papua New Guinea in the east, is one of the strongholds of the whole range. The saltwater crocodile holds the coasts and pushes far inland up the biggest rivers, the Fly, the Ramu, and above all the Sepik, while the New Guinea crocodile, Crocodylus novaeguineae, a more modest freshwater species, keeps to the interior. Two species, one island. It is easy, this far from any city, for an attack to happen and never be recorded at all, which means every figure that follows should be read as a floor well below the truth.