What does tin mining have to do with Indonesia's crocodile attacks?

mining industry. CNA's Kiki Siregar got up close and personal with the animals, and she joins me this week to talk about why these deadly clashes are on the rise. Hi, Kiki, great to have you on. Hi Teresa. I have so many questions about this topic. Maybe you can start off by telling us about these ancient predators and how prevalent they are in communities like Banca where you visited. Had you seen these types of crocodiles before reporting on this story?

I must say I haven't seen them in Jakarta where I am based. I've seen them before in the zoos. So when I went to Bangka, it was my first time being in Ubana. Banka is in Sumatra Island. I was quite surprised to find that actually a lot of people are familiar with saltwater crocodiles. Even if they hadn't encountered saltwater crocodiles in their lives, they would have known someone who had, so it's quite common, I must say.

Now your story, it's up on YouTube, it has almost 200,000 views and I was reading through the comments that people left and a lot of them are saying, Look, it's us humans who are to blame for the attacks, not these animals. And that is correct because the good thing is humans are actually not on the menu of salt spots or crocodiles. So that's a good thing, but having said that, They're very sensitive, and if the habitat gets destroyed, they

would need to migrate. Saltwater crocodiles are sensitive to noise and illegal tin mining is very rampant in Banger. You can find illegal tin mining behind schools, people's homes. This was not the case 20 years ago, so illegal mining has become rampant in recent years, so to say. And this is why we have seen an increase in attacks. You spoke to a man named Lammuddin, and he says

he turned away from farming. He decided to pursue illegal tin mining because he simply couldn't make a living in the legal way, and I know in your story you say he was attacked by a saltwater croc, but he counts himself lucky. Can you tell me more about him? And it really seems like his story is indicative of So many others. Yes, well, he is indeed lucky because

he survived. Many people don't, right? Lahmuddin used to be a salt pepper farmer about 15 years ago, and he didn't earn much as a salt pepper farmer, and that's how he then decided to become an illegal tin miner. So one day back in 2013, He was done for the day. I wanted to go home, and this is what Lahmmuddin had to say. One day when I finished minington illegally, I went home by boat and I was attacked there. This is the scar. I fought back and instead it jumped onto my left thigh.

It hurt so much. Blood was flowing out of my thighs. And so he was just struggling with the situation. And he was left paralyzed for a month, but after a month, he slowly recovered and because he had no other job, he decided to go back mining, but in order to be safer, he decided to move to another place where he thinks he would not encounter crocs. So it sounds like people like him are willing to take

the risk, right, just to earn a living. When I was researching for this episode, I watched your story, I also pulled up videos of these massive reptiles and Just seeing them on the screen, Kiki, I totally got the sense of how dangerous they are and I read about a 5 year old girl who was just attacked in January. I cannot imagine coming face to face with one. They're actually very scary, I must say. Like I did a few PTCs and I said, let's not use these ones because I looked very scared.

Well, they're huge. Did I mention they can actually weigh up to 1000 kg? Yeah, so 1000 kg 7 m long, and they're not just in Bangka, they're actually also in other parts of Indonesia, in particular in eastern Indonesia. Bangka has seen the highest number of human crocodile attacks in recent years, but we also have provinces such as East Nusa Tangara and East Kalimantan facing the same situation.

And it's primarily because the habitat has been destroyed, not just because of tin mining, it could also be because of uh palm oil expansion. Before I went to Banger, the big question was how could I actually see a crocodile, right? So I did some Googling and then I encountered this YouTube channel where a person claims to be a crocodile caller.

So he calls crocodiles, at least he claims to be able to call crocodiles by whistling, like, Obviously louder And based on the footage of videos I saw on his YouTube channel, a crocodile would then come swimming, and then he would do some stunts. This is his job. He is a YouTuber and he does it because he was shopless at that time. So when I went to Bunker, I met up with him and we went to an estuary where he did exactly that what I just said.

He whistled, and then slowly I could see a crock approaching me. I got scared, I must say, and once the crocodile became quite close to us, the crocodile collar threw a dead chicken into the estuary, so the crocodile jumped. and we had good footage because of that, and that's where I did my PTC, but I really, I really looked scared, so it was not good.

So this is actually not in my report and there's a reason why I did not include this in my report, and that is because I must say I don't know how legit he is because after this, we went to a 2nd place where he did exactly the same thing. And nothing happened. I couldn't see a crocodile, and then we went to a 3rd and 4th place, the same thing, unlucky for us. It could well be that in the next attempts, nothing happened because simply there were no crocodiles there.

I'm not sure, but it could also be that he really doesn't possess any special skills. But it was interesting because that was really the first time in my life I saw a crocodile in an estuary quite close to me. Do you have any figures like how many attacks there have been over the past few years or most recently? In Indonesia, it's about 1000 attacks in the last decade. Which has led to about 500 deaths. That's a lot, right? Yeah,

it's the world, right? Is that what people are calling it? Exactly. So Indonesia has the most crocodile attacks in the world and in Banger since 2016, I think there were about 60 deaths and just last year alone. 2024, 10 deaths, around 10 deaths. So going back to your point of how scared you were when you tried to film your piece to camera, when you're that close to the animal, how do their handlers keep you safe? I mean, are they restrained in any way? Did you

feel like you made eye contact with them? Can you kind of describe what it's like being near such a large reptile? First off, I made sure I was quite far away from the crock. Until we had to do the PTC, right? So that's the point when I came, how far away was I? Probab like 5 m away, maybe less from the crocodile. And at that point, environmentalists were actually holding the crocodile, so in that sense, the croc was tight, so I

was safe. The environmentals are all professionals and they have a lot of experience dealing with crocodiles, so. Yeah, luckily nothing happened. Yeah, but sadly attacks are not uncommon and when one happens, there's actually a sequence of events that takes place, right? I was reading how sometimes local residents try and catch the animal themselves. That's just wild. Is that allowed, Kiki? How successful are people on their own if they try to do this?

And it's actually not allowed because crocodiles are protected by law and should people know of a situation where there's a crocodile nearby or they've encountered one, they should call the authorities or they could also call environmentalists in Banger, there's an organization called LOB Foundation who help people dealing with such conditions.

I must say there is revenge killing in some situations where people feel, OK, I see a crocodile, I want to kill this crocodile, and they take things into their own hands, which is really sad, but Andy Yusouf, an environmentalist from Alobi Foundation told me. People should stay away from it and let them deal with the animals. We should protect the wild habitats of animals in nature. This applies to all animals in Bunker Beliung, not just the crocodiles, because illegal mining, which destroys the

habitat is extraordinarily widespread in Bua Belitton. The entire habitat has been damaged by illegal mining, which then forces wild animals out of their homes. Now, according to Statista, Indonesia is one of the world's largest tin producers, coming only 3rd after China and Myanmar. Can we talk about that industry, you know, how important is it to the Indonesian economy and how much political will is there really to deal with this illegal mining?

It is very important to the economy. So when I was there last year in 2024, it so happens that there was a corruption case going on surrounding illegal tin mining. And because of that, a lot of people were afraid to mind. So when I was there, people were telling me, look, I haven't been working for days, because I don't know what to do. I'm not mining at the moment because I'm afraid that the cops would come and catch me because they know

it's illegal. So it's very complicated. Basically, the government wants to solve it. They want, they want to solve illegal tin mining, but the problem is what should people do then, right? Legal mining is done by a state-owned enterprise called PTIA. They produce tin and usually the tin gets exported to countries and then produced as mostly electronics.

Major brands such as Samsung, Apple reportedly have been using Tin from Banker, but it's, it's really complicated because again, it's, it's a high unemployment rate. And because Bangka is a major producer of tin, people just think, OK, this is the easiest way out. So there's the political aspects, there's also the ecological aspect, I suppose, you know, with these crocodiles, because even if they're caught after they injure or maim someone, the story doesn't end

there because there are challenges on that end too, right? Namely, when it comes to resources and where these animals should go. Exactly. So if Aloy Foundation, that's the environmentalist group get a call that a crocodile is nearby or they need to rescue someone, they would definitely come as soon as they can. But Aloy Foundation has limited staff, they have

limited funding as well and also limited resources. They can take up about 20 crocodiles, but they told me there were cases when there were more than 20 crocodiles. And then they said, OK, what now? What they did was they decided to let go of some and put it back into nature. So it becomes a vicious cycle, I would say when I knew about this, my question was, can you not migrate the crock somewhere else, right? Exactly,

especially because Indonesian is a cappelago. It has so many islands, isn't there like an empty island anywhere else? But they say it's not that easy. First of all, saltwater crocodiles can only live in certain situations. They don't live in sea. They live in shallow rivers, estuaries, and also if they need to migrate, it would take a lot of resources, human resources, financial resources as well. So that's the situation at the moment sadly. It's a really interesting,

very complex story. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing those details with me. Thank you, Theresa. Head to YouTube and CNA.Asia as well to see Kiki's reports. And also there are TV episodes of CNA Correspondent every Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. Singapore, Hong Kong time. I'm Teresa Tang. Thank you very much for joining me this week. The team behind this episode is Sai Yaguin, Clara Ong, Tiffany Ag, Juani Johari, and Craig Dale. Bye for now.