We’ll keep an eye out for crocs in Likas Bay, says Sabah Wildlife Department

KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) will keep an eye on the sea at Likas Bay here after the latest videos of crocodile sightings at the location.

In one of the videos, a crocodile can be faintly seen floating in the water not far from the Menara Kinabalu (PPNS) building which houses the Chief Minister’s office as well as various other government departments.

State wildlife director Augustine Tuuga said however they were unsure if the clips being spread over social media were recently taken.

“The problem with this is they don’t say when the video was taken,” he said, when contacted on Thursday (Jan 11).

“We don’t know if this is the latest video. We received picture reports of crocodiles taken from PPNS around that area about two years ago,” he added.

He said it was difficult to catch crocodiles using traps in the choppy water.

“Crocodiles do not normally enter traps when set at sea. We wanted to shoot it but the crocodile did not appear during the few weeks our rangers monitored the water surrounding the area then.

“We have asked people to report to us if they see the crocodile again but we never received any report since then,” Tuuga said.

While the Sabah Wildlife Department understood the people’s concerns, he said however they could not afford to constantly put their people there without confirmed reports of the latest crocodile sightings.

“It’s not that we are not sending a team but we are also attending to other reports.

“We only have one team and in fact they were in Kampung Takuli, Kuala Penyu (some 106km from Kota Kinabalu) last night (Wednesday Jan 10) attending to a confirmed crocodile sighting.

“That is why it is important for us to have the details so that we can set priority on which one to attend first.

“We receive many reports that we have to attend to with limited staff,” Tuuga said.

He said this same team had also gone to the northern districts in Sabah such as Kudat, Pitas, Kota Marudu and Kota Belud, among others, to trap crocodiles.

“We don’t have enough staff but we try our best,” he said.