Crocodiles may not be the roaring type, but this has not prevented the owners of one of the world’s largest crocodile farms from running a lucrative trade dealing mainly with the animal’s highly priced skin and meat.
Mainland Holdings Limited runs a neat operation at its croc farm along the main highway near Lae, where young crocodiles are hatched in controlled conditions in an artificially-heated hatchery and grown in specifically tailored pens.
In an almost god-like fashion, David Wilken and his farm assistants determine the sex of their baby crocs in the hatchery as gender is dictated by heat.
Wilken is general manager of Mainland’s crocodile farm.
By the last count, it had 46,000 live crocs in its stock.
Most of these came through the farm’s hatchery—the only one of its kind in Papua New Guinea - although some were shipped in from neighbouring provinces, the Sepik region mostly.
“We don’t really need to buy baby crocs and some even larger ones from individuals but we do it anyway,” explains Wilken.
“We know that crocs can be a source of income for them, so we hardly turn anyone away.”
He was watching four of his farmhands handled a shipment of young crocs sent to them by a hunter from a neighbouring province that morning.
These came in well-marked cardboard cartons and freight forwarded. This means the recipient, in this case Mainland Holdings, meets the freight cost and not the sender.
Measuring 60 to 70 centimetres in length, these will earn the sender some K50 per croc.
A croc egg is also highly priced with each one fetching up to K10.
In one of his recent ‘shopping’ trips, Wilken bought up to 20,000 eggs.
He had to charter an aircraft to ship them across from the Sepik region to the croc farm in Lae.
Such massive shipments and egg relocation may alarm those concerned about sustainable harvest resource and conservationists.
For the Sepik, the context matters. For a start, the Sepik River is one of the world’s greatest river systems.
It is 1126 kilometres long and covers 7.7 million hectares.
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New way to sell phone cards electronically
Digicel Pacific has launched an innovative new product called Direct Flex, which is an electronic top-up solution currently being rolled out across the Pacific region. FlexPacific, a master distributor for Digicel Pacific (www.flexpacific.com) is working with Digicel PNG, Digicel Vanuatu and Digicel Fiji to introduce DirectFlex to resellers.
DirectFlex allows any Digicel reseller of airtime to sign up and sell Digicel Flex electronically. The easiest and simplest way to do this is over their mobile phone. Recently launched in Fiji and Papua New Guinea, “Phone2Phone” is seeing great demand and bringing the benefits of DigicelFlex to the remotest parts of the Pacific.
According to Stephen Breen, Managing Director of FlexPacific, “The key benefit of DirectFlex is that it means that resellers of Flex can access airtime much more easily than before when they were more reliant on physical cards.
Whether in Mt Hagen, Suva, or Port Vila, all you need is a mobile phone to become a reseller of Digicel airtime, then you can purchase airtime directly from FlexPacific”.
“Throughout Fiji for example, we’re seeing great demand from our resellers. From Suva to the Yasawas, every type of outlet wants to convert from scratch cards to electronic. It’s the future and our reseller base has realised this and we have hundreds of customers converting to electronic—they’re joining the mobile world.
Nazia from Nazia’s Store in Nailaga, Ba said: “Phone2Phone has definitely benefited my business because the customers are eager to use it, especially younger customers. This is because they can top up with the exact amount they want—for example $1.00 or $4.25. They receive a message telling them the exact amount they’ve topped up by, and this avoids any disputes. As well as this, Phone2Phone is very easy to use and I had no problem adjusting to the technology, and I like the fact that I no longer have to carry cards, as it is more secure.”
Paula Vura from the Lau Group, Vanuabalavu, Lomaloma said: “We’re having a lot of sales of DirectFlex because it’s easy, it’s fast, and you can top up phones anywhere you go to, because people don’t have to travel for miles to buy Flex cards’
FlexPacific’s goal is to bring the benefits of affordable mobile communications to Pacific Islanders. FlexPacific will introduce new and convenient ways to give people access to purchasing top up.
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Add to that is the insistence by Mainland Holdings that the egg harvesting scheme be sustainable.
“We insist that the whole nest of eggs ought not to be removed,” says Wilken.
“The harvesters in the Sepik region understand that some eggs ought to be left to regenerate the croc population.
“We also insist that if the baby crocs are being removed to be sold to us, then its papa and mama ought to stay.”
Wilken’s Mainland Holdings is actually the main sponsor of the Sepik Wetlands Management Initiative (SWMI), a community-based organisation dedicated to the conservation of the Sepik’s extensive flora and fauna.
“Systematic aerial nest count since 1982 indicates a significant increase in the saltwater crocodile population,” says a SWMI document.
“The highest count was recorded in 2006.
“The greatest improvement in nesting and habitat is in the upper Sepik.”
That document provided for SWMI’s nomination to the 2006 Equator Prize also disclosed that Sepik landowners received US$45,000 for eggs harvested in February 2006.
“This vital economic return enables local people to pay high school and university fees, bride prices, local travel (often enabling access to markets) and other basic goods and services, start business enterprises, construct potable water systems and fund pilot efforts at village-level crocodile ranching.”
The SWMI nomination singled out Mainland Holdings for playing “a lynch pin role in purchasing eggs and young at good prices”.
“It sponsors technical consultants to collaborate with SWMI and local communities in the field and provides funding for crucial conservation-oriented fieldwork when other partners cannot assist.”
Once the eggs are placed in the farm’s hatchery in Lae, Wilken usually charters a small plane to ship money to Sepik landowners.
At the Lae farm, eggs tend to hatch between 36 to 46 hours, a far cry from eggs left in the wild whose incubation period usually lasts three months.
From the hatchery, it’s straight to the orientation pens where growth of the crocodiles are closely monitored.
Staff in the sterile environ of the adjacent farm hospital help in this.
Heat is crucial in crocodile farming.
Temperature in the pens, Wilken explains, tends to hover around 30 degrees Celsius.
He said heat at 30 degrees helps the crocs metabolise.
“If the temperature is down say at 27 degrees, crocs find this too cold and they tend to go to sleep, they hibernate.
“This is, of course, not good for the farm as the crocs sleep all the time and they don’t eat, so they don’t grow.”
From the orientation pens, it’s straight to the big pens down the hill to the cubicles where crocodiles in various sizes and lengths frolic, feed and fight, sometimes.
Brawling is not encouraged as it tends to damage the highly valued croc skins.
Feeding, usually once a day, is frenzy time as crocs swing and sway their massive bodies to tussle for food.
Slaughter time comes two or three years after, and this is not done openly in full view of the animals. A modern concrete house acts as the slaughter house.
Like the Pacific’s coconut tree, nothing is put to waste in Lae’s saltwater crocodiles.
The meat is exported to Australia and the skin is airfreighted to buyers in France and Japan to be turned into much sought-after items such as handbags, belts, purse, shoes and coats.
Paris usually goes for the lengthier skins, up to 44 centimetres. Tokyo, on the other hand, prefers the shorter 32 centimetres skins.
Once skinned, Mainland Holdings observe a delicate process where croc skins are immersed in salt beds in coolers.
For shipment abroad, these skins are clipped with red brands—signalling they are lawful exports under CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species)—rolled up and stored in big cloth-like copra bags. Up to 30,000 skins are exported this way each year.
Wilken and his staff must be doing something right as 70% of the croc skins are classified as top grade, a far cry from their early years where only 20% of the product got grade one.
Croc skins also generate the most revenue, accounting for some 85% of Mainland’s earnings and croc meat providing the remaining 15%.
