Award-winning crocodiles

It's always great when crocodiles win awards. When a natural history programme featuring crocodiles wins an award, you know the toothy ones had a fairly significant role to play in it. Especially when the programme in question is Life in Cold Blood: Armoured Giants which just won the Golden Panda at the recent Wildscreen awards held in Bristol, UK. I like to think that our saltwater crocodiles had a part to play in winning, of course, as they featured in perhaps the most spectacular sequence in the programme - cooperative feeding on fish, which was filmed here in northern Australia. Being the scientific advisor for the crocodile half of the programme, I was able to persuade the BBC to bring Sir David Attenborough out to work with us on this crocodile sequence, because I knew exactly how spectacular it would be to get David and the crocs in shot. Working with David for a whole week was an experience we will never forget. This is someone who was responsible for getting me into a life of wildlife in the first place, and I felt this was a way of paying him back in some tiny way.

Truth in the Media

Ah, don't we love our local newspaper the Northern Territory News! They do try, but occasionally I'd like to strangle (figuratively of course) the journalist who wrote the story. In this case we sent out a media release talking about the work we did with Sir David Attenborough in November 2006 for his excellent series Life in Cold Blood. After all, it was quite a momentous event for us bringing the great Sir David to the Territory to film our saltwater crocodiles (and I'm sure I'll write more about that experience later).

The original media release contains the following:

"David Attenborough is one of the only people I've met who actually exceeded my expectations" said Dr Britton. "His enthusiasm and fascination for both animals and people was humbling, and there's no better ambassador for how remarkable our crocodiles are than watching David enthuse about them in his inimitable style."

The NT News version was:

"There's no better ambassador for how remarkable our crocodiles are than watching David describe how magnificent they are," Dr Britton said.

Gah.

They then go on to quote me saying that people come to the NT because it's a place that crocodiles eat people! First of all that was not a quote, and taken out of context of the media release (which is all about the value of crocs to the NT) it rather misses the point!

Oh well, keep trying...