Yesterday our group made a visit to Hartley's Crocodile Adventure Park, located outside of Cairns. I love both reptiles and extremely dangerous animals and I was very excited to see some crocodiles. They also advertised that they worked on conservation efforts to protect wild crocodiles. I'm an avid animal rights activist and was really interested in hearing about their wildlife protection.
Just a few minutes into our guided farm tour I realized that this place was not everything I had expected. The crocodile attack demonstrations, snake shows, and koala feedings are only half of this business. The other half takes eggs from female crocodiles, hatches them in an incubator, raises them in pens, and then farms them for their skin and meat. Crocodiles' sex is decided during the incubation process (based on what temperature the eggs are kept) and Hartley's breeds solely male crocodiles. The young crocs are then kept in a dark room until they grow to a meter long, and are then put into 30-40 square foot pens with about 15-25 other crocodiles. After they reach a desired size, they are either slaughtered on site or sent to another farm to be slaughtered there.
I've been an strict vegetarian for four and a half years, and I try really hard to be both aware of food issues around me and respectful of the diet choices of everyone. I'm always interested in learning about the social justice and health issues surrounding the food industry (and not just the meat industry, just look into American corn farming and the company Monsanto) and I'm always open to have discussions about the industry and the ethics of eating meat. I also don't want to offend or fit into the crazy vegetarian stereotype, so I try to be careful about these conversations and always try to listen with an open mind. I definitely don't know everything there is to know about the meat industry and I don't pretend that my choice to live a meat-free lifestyle is for everyone.
That being said, I was appalled at the way Hartley's operated. I walked away from the tour a few times as we listened to our guide discuss the farming process because of my personal disgust and surprise at this hidden part of their business. A woman asked our tour guide about the farming aspect and she responded that by breeding and harvesting crocodiles at Hartley's, the demand for crocodile skin is filled in by farmed crocs and the poaching of wild crocs is significantly decreased. This seems like a scapegoat argument, because what Hartley's is essentially doing is choosing how one sector of the species should live in order to "protect" the rest of the species. I'm going to touch on this later, but as I was a little bit in shock (and with a few tears in my eyes) we headed to the other parts of our day.
On our boat tour of the farm we saw a few female crocodiles protecting the nests that had been raided for their eggs, unbeknownst to them. I know that crocodiles have small brains and are not the smartest animals around, but I can't help imagining that the females must be confused when, at the end of the incubation period, no baby crocodiles come out of the nest they've been faithfully guarding for three months.
The crocodile attack show was...interesting to say the least. We watched a few "trainers" hand feed a crocodile chicken wings and exchange inside jokes while the audience ooo-ed and ahh-ed amid shouts of "bite him" or "attack him". It was this particular crocodile's first show and it seemed as though the trainers almost knew what they were doing. The whole show felt very casual and there were no mentions of "don't try to approach a crocodile like I'm doing even though I make it look easy and I can just run away". The audience was full of kids and, though I know most people would never approach a wild croc (they would probably do the opposite), that's not to say someone could see the trainer toss the wing into the croc's mouth and think to themselves I could do that, and then get hurt. There didn't seem to be a level of respect for the crocodile that I believe an animal of that power deserves. There was very little education about wild crocodiles and crocodile conservation in the show. The mentions of crocodile attacks were very condescending, summarizing each story as someone doing something dumb and then getting attacked. I felt as though there was a huge hole in the show, and for all of the education that Hartley's claimed to be doing, I didn't come away feeling like respect for wildlife was addressed at all.
A few of us were lucky enough to talk to the owner of Hartley's, and I was eager to ask some questions and have some of my issues clarified/addressed with her. Hartley's is eco-tourism certified, which is a label Australian tourist businesses can receive for being environmentally conscious and sustainability minded. I was interested in getting a perspective on meat farming from the owner of a sustainable business, but I was really surprised by how the conversation turned. I knew things would get interesting when the owner told us she was wary of the eco-tourism certification because a new part of the process is to publish literature in brochures about climate change, and according to her, it's not an exact enough science or something that is certain and definite, so she doesn't want to polarize anyone. She went on about volcanos under the ice caps and mini-ice ages, and then turned into a political rant about the carbon tax in Australia (which is a whole can of worms in itself, but you should look into it if you're interested in politics and sustainability) and I was left a little speechless.
I tried to bring the conversation back to the crocodiles, because I was really interested in the farming part of her business. I asked her what kind of conservation efforts the company did, and her response was "well, not much." According to her, the government handles all of the crocodile conservation and poaching was made illegal so there's not really anything they need to do.
The owner even admitted that the farming part of the business was not as profitable (barely even at all), but they were not planning on stopping anytime soon. It seemed to me that this farm realized their product could also be a money-maker when it's alive, so they planned a park around their business. I don't believe that they park was founded around conservation efforts, it was founded around money. The park history even says that the first crocodile was bought for show at a tea-room on the property in the early 1900s. The "conservation and education" bit seemed to be thrown in at the end to make crazy eco-hippies like myself happy. Preston made the astute observation that the farm was a bit like a bull-riding rodeo in front of a factory farm for cattle.
Hartley's is a pretty small scale farm and is not making a huge dent in the demand for crocodile skins around the world. If the aim of the business is to decrease poaching of wild crocodiles, there conceivably would also be an effort to decrease the demand for crocodile skins in the first place. It makes sense to me that if your business is farming a product to protect that wild product, but the farming is not profitable, you would want to decrease the need to farm as a whole industry to further protect the wild product. There is none of this going on with Hartley's.
The quality of life for these farmed crocodiles is so low, and their death is not easy either. They spend their lives in small enclosed pens with a lot of other crocodiles and nosy tourists peering over them all day everyday. They are stunned before they are killed, but anyone who has researched conventional meat slaughter knows that those stun guns fail more than they work and the animal is either partially or fully aware and feeling. It's not an ideal life or death, and it seems unnecessary to me.
I could talk about this business for hours, but this post is already too long and I have to leave Cairns in just over 4 hours. As much as I was disgusted by Hartley's, I'm still really glad I was exposed to it. It's easy to see a stamp of eco-tourism and assume that a business is environmentally friendly and sustainably minded. It's important to remember that things are not as they always seem and a little skepticism here and there can sometimes be educational and enlightening. Not to say that every business is like this, and most aren't, but a gut feeling that leads to inquiry offers new perspectives and contexts. No one will ever know everything, so keep learning and questioning. Those whom you disagree with can often be the best fire for your own passion. Yesterday was a reminder of why I care about sustainability, the food industry, and animal rights and though I felt angry, sad, and offended, at least I felt something. Passion is something I believe is sometimes lacking in this world, but change was never made by bland and bored people. Whether you're against the farming, exploitation, and commodification of crocodiles or you're the industry's biggest supporter, always have grace and humility framed by unyielding passion.
To quote Dr. Suess: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."
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