THE family of a girl tragically killed by a saltwater crocodile wants to see widespread culling of the killer reptiles in the Northern Territory.
Briony Goodsell, 11, was taken by a croc while swimming with her seven-year-old old sister Beth and two friends at Black Jungle Swamp near their Lambells Lagoon home in Darwin's rural area last month.
Her grandfather Winston Anspach, who was the last person to see her before she rode off on her bike for a swim, told the Northern Territory News yesterday he wanted every crocodile within 100km of Darwin shot dead.
And he said he would be the first to volunteer to hit Top End waterways armed with a gun.
"Let's kill all the b-----ds," he said. "You can't have wild animals walking up the main street."
"But that seems to be the views of our so-called experts when they say this is the Territory and we should learn to live with crocodiles.
"We shoot kangaroos and emus and they are on our coat of arms, so why not do it to our crocs?"
Mr Anspach said the cull should happen yearly.
Since young Briony's death, the long-debated and contentious issue of crocodile culling in the Northern Territory has been back on the agenda.
A Northern Territory News poll showed that almost 60 per cent of the 200 Territorians who responded supported a cull.
But experts, tourism operators and crocodile farmers favour an education program and say crocodiles are an "economic asset" and a reason why tourists visit the NT.
