Four individuals are now facing legal action over the alleged theft of hundreds of crocodile eggs from a renowned national park.
Sebastian Robinson, a pilot, along with Timothy Luck, Dean Larsen, and Stephen Slark, have been accused of illegally extracting, storing, and transporting a protected species from Kakadu National Park in February 2024.
Additionally, SDRL Pty Ltd, trading as Kinga Contracting, is charged with deceitfully gaining financial benefits in connection to the incident.
The charges stem from a collaborative inquiry conducted by Parks Australia, the Australian Federal Police, and the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Commission.
In the Northern Territory, collecting crocodile eggs legally involves supplying them to crocodile farms, a process that typically requires helicopter pilots to lower an individual onto nests in isolated wetlands for collection.
In the Darwin Local Court today, Ruth Champion, who represents the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, emphasized the gravity of the unlawful crocodile egg collection charges.
That took into account the sophistication and complexity of the operation, the number of accused acting in concert, the use of a helicopter and the very large number of eggs taken, she told the court.
“We’re not talking about one, two or three, but something in the hundreds.”
Champion also noted the impact of the alleged egg stealing on Traditional Owners and the cultural harm felt by them.
Defence lawyer Thomas Clelland told the court the matter was a complicated one involving the complex area of DNA analysis.
Judge Elizabeth Morris set a five-day hearing from November 30 to December 4, with 10 witnesses to be called.
In February 2022 Robinson was piloting a helicopter on a legal crocodile egg collecting mission in the Top End when the machine crashed, killing egg collector Chris “Willow” Wilson and leaving Robinson a paraplegic.
Their employer, helicopter operator and reality TV star Matt Wright, was found guilty in December of attempting to pervert the course of justice in relation to the crash investigation.
The star of hit TV shows Outback Wrangler and Wild Croc Territory is behind bars in Darwin, serving a five-month term for trying to tamper with evidence to cover up the disconnecting of flight time meters.
Wright was not accused of causing the crash, the death of his co-star Wilson or the injuries of Robinson and is not involved in the egg-stealing case.
