This is part two of a two part series. If you haven't yet, you can start by listening to part one, The True Cost of Crocodile Skin. It's in your feed now and just a warning, this episode deals with some disturbing themes beat reality, animal cruelty, and child abuse. Please take care while listening, So Kat. At one point, the croc skin industry was considered so successful in the Northern Territory that there was talk of emulating it or attempting to in another state in Queensland, tell me a bit
about what happened. That's right.
The territory had grown one hundred million dollar croc industry and Queensland wanted a piece of it. So Queensland introduced a new law that allowed wild crock eggs to be foraged by licensees, and these licensees would sell them for again around twenty five dollars apiece to factory farms. And the new law was supported by the all powerful CATA party who also wanted and I'm quoting here indigenous groups
to host crocodile hunting safaris. As you can imagine, there was a lot of opposition to the idea, even in celebrity circles and in twenty nineteen at Australia Zoo on the Sunshine Coast, Bindy Irwin urged her Instagram followers, five.
Point seven million of them, to.
Sign a petition to scrap this new law, and she warned that crocodile hatchlings would be used to turn into boots and bags and belts, and that Australia Zoo's research with the UNI of Queensland showed that it would be devastating to crop populations to take their babies. Her petition provoked these two scientists at Charles Darwin University to give
her campaign an absolute drubbing. So these two scientists research reportedly underpinned Queensland and Territory laws, and their research showed but when wild salty eggs get too wet or too dry, most eggs die anyway, and even viable hatchlings had a slim chance of survival to maturity. And so therefore ranching, which is collecting the eggs, had minimal impact on crop populations, they argued. In fact, they said it had conservation benefits.
Okay, so there was a pair of scientists arguing that collecting the crocodile eggs was actually good for the environment. Who are these two scientists.
Yeah, one of the duo was Graham Webb, who is quite a celebrity scientist.
He's a blowkey, silver head raconteur.
There's maybe one hundred thousand crocodiles now, it's about one hundred million dollars a year in turn with everybody. It extends out in aboriginal communities and it helps the tourist in this year here, so we've made them.
He owns Crocodile Dillis Park, which is a Darwin factory farm and it has an adjoining zoo and research lab and Bindi. Owen's other detractor was a man named Adam Britton, quite a celebrity scientist, who is this eloquent zoologist who was then in his forties and he was mentored by web.
When you work with crocodiles, you have to be very respectful of what they're capable of. And if it goes wrong, that's why and you lose your hand, that's when you lose your arm. That's where potentially you could lose your life.
He had hobnobbed with Royalty. He'd featured in National Geographic and David Attenborough documentaries. Today crocodile specialist, doctor Adam Britton is writing along with Robbie.
He's collecting DNA to help create a genetic map of Darwin's crocodiles. What we're doing is we're taking tissue samples from crocodiles that were catching in Darwin Harbor.
And like Graham Web, Adam Britton ran a media business and he provided peace to camera expertise and crop.
For hire talent. And he accused.
Bindy Irwin of trying to make up facts. But as her petition gained momentum, so did a transnational police probe into Adam Britton's own fictions.
And his research.
Colleague told me that none of Darwin's research community could have possibly imagined in their worst nightmares what he was capable of.
What did police uncover about Adam Britton.
Through online sales sites like Gumtree. Britian had been scamming residents who were relocating or retiring, and he was offering to rehome their dogs, and he'd sent them fictional updates on their pets welfare with photos had taken before he abused the dogs inside what he called his torture room. And this was a shipping container at the back of
his home in Darwin's Southeast. He then fed the dog's body parts to Smorg, and Smorg was his talent for higher crocodile In Autumn twenty twenty two, police raided Britain's home and by August twenty twenty four he was serving a ten year jail sentence. He was found guilty of fifty six charges, including best reality, animal cruelty and possessing child pornography. So before his crimes were exposed, his colleagues
had suspected nothing. Most had considered him a nice guy, quiet and gentle and nerdy, But then they started asking if he duped peers and dog owners, then what else was.
Chicanery coming up?
CAF visits Britain in prison and interrogates the conservation claims at the heart of the crocodile skin industry. So cap when Adam Britton's crimes were revealed that he had been prolifically abusing animals, people began to look at his research and question what a conviction like that meant. Can you tell me about the questions people had and the conclusions that they came to about his crocodile research.
The research conducted by Adam Britton and Graham Webb asked questions like if we remove s from wild crotness to supply factory farms, does that have an ecological impact? Their research can included that extracting wild eggs and farming crocodiles was actually good for conservation, and these findings continue to underpin territory and Queensland laws as well as global conservation science, and they also informed federal laws governing farm welfare codes.
Plus Britains and Webs claims helped frame the territories in Queensland's crocodile management plans, and the science Britain helped produce underpins not just government policy but also public messaging that
gives social license to this industry. But soon after his arrest for cruelty investiality, some of his colleagues then went searching for the hard data that supports Britains and Webs claims and they couldn't find any worse Still, as study by a group of scientists has now found that wild extraction for crop farming actually expediates ecosystem decline.
Okay, and so what is Adam Britton saying about all of this? Now? You visited him in Dale, didn't you so tell me what he was like and what he said.
Yeah, Britain is now an inmate at Darwin Correctional Center, and I was really scared of meeting him.
His crimes were unfathomably cruel.
You really can't read the court transcript and maintain your composure. And as well as having child abuse material, he's been dubbed the world's worst and a lal abuser, so I was pretty nervous. What was extraordinary to me was that when we shook hands, his hand was clammy and his body was trembling, And I soon realized that it was possible that this man was as scared of me as
I was of him. He acknowledged that animal welfare opinion coming from a zoasatus might seem hypocritical, but he wrote to me that when it comes to animal cruelty on crocodile farms, the small size of cages and conditions in farms gave Cross a limited behavioral repertoire. And I'll read a little more of that letter. It reads single crocodile pens have come in for particular criticism because of.
Their small size.
While I think it's possible for crocodiles to be kept in single pens that don't impact their overall welfare.
I'd like to.
See regulations tightened up to ensure this.
He acknowledged that there are welfare concerns in the crocodile industry.
Yeah, I think he was tacitly admitting that, which is significant because his former research colleague, Graham Webb had said animal advocates are misguided and that crops enjoy a better life in captivity because it's brutal for.
Them in the wild.
Still stands by the industry, even though he's distanced himself from Britain. And he still claims that Aboriginal workers are key beneficiaries of the industry. But when I tried sourcing evidence to support this claim, I.
Hit a wall.
There's nothing in government data nor industry auditing that suggests that Aboriginal people are key beneficiaries of this industry.
Okay, And to come back to Adam Britain, I mean, this is a man who it seems was one of the worst animal abuses in the country, if not the world. His research before he was discovered underpins the way that the crocodile industry works. Now, so what does that say to you about how we should be thinking about the crocodile industry.
Yeah, well, first, I think lawmakers really mass review whether it's okay to have laws concerning animal welfare informed by.
A zoa sadist.
Many animal advocates described this as a cruel and unnecessary industry that exists solely to cater for the rich. It's also been described as secretive, and I know from my interviews that very few people employed by the industry are
prepared to speak out. Many of them are bound by non disclosure agreements, and some ex workers wouldn't go on the record because they feared industry figures, and some of the scientists I spoke we also wouldn't go on the record, as the research community in Darwin is really small and the university sector is very political. And so I think it's useful to think about the industry. As Donnie and Belong described it as a very outdated and colonial industry.
And you mentioned that more recent research has thrown into question those claims around conservation and crocodile farming. So at this moment, is there anyone who is looking into the industry. Do you say that there might be reform that comes from this.
I think there might be reform.
There is a study about to come out, it's been peer reviewed. Hopefully the territory government will look into the science now and review the science. Bodies like the UCN Graham Web no longer sits on that body. His chief scientist still does, but bodies like those are starting to question whether it's okay to have its advisory groups kind of stacked with industry based scientists rather than what they call more blue sky scientists or filled research based scientists.
I think things are slowly shifting. I think people in the fashion justice sector would like to see this industry band and transition into something more productive that doesn't cater solely towards a rich market.
Well, Ca, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, Ruby, thanks.
For listening to this episode of seven Am.
Tomorrow.
We'll be back with another of our favorite episodes from last year. It's about the ways AI chatbots are being designed to keep us engaged, with sometimes devastating consequences. The story centers on the relationship between an older man and a meta chatbot. What it reveals is the way that loneliness is being exploited by big tech for financial gain. I'm Ruby Jones.
This is seven am. Thanks for listening.