{"id":13078,"date":"2025-07-22T09:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T09:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/13078\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T09:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T09:48:09","slug":"wildlife-rangers-search-for-noosa-crocodile-after-potential-sighting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/13078\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildlife rangers search for Noosa crocodile after potential sighting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Authorities are continuing to search for a crocodile reportedly seen in a Sunshine Coast waterway, hundreds of kilometres south of its typical Queensland habitat.<\/p>\n

Rangers have been scouring the area from the air, land and water following the potential sighting by long-time angler James Graham.<\/p>\n

He said he spotted the croc-shaped silhouette<\/a> on his “fish finder” on the weekend, prompting a search of the Noosa River that continued last night.<\/p>\n

A drone has been deployed and the search will continue today and into this evening.<\/p>\n

\"Man<\/p>\n

Wildlife rangers have been using spotlights in the hope of detecting the crocodile by its gleaming eyes. (Supplied: DETSI)<\/p>\n

Program coordinator Scott Booth said there had not been other public sightings since Mr Graham’s report.<\/p>\n

“We’d also expect to see a crocodile sitting out for long periods trying to soak up any sunshine on exposed banks near the edge of the water, and we just haven’t seen that,” Mr Booth said.<\/p>\n

He said there was a chance the sighting involved a different animal.<\/p>\n

“That’s probably more indicative of potentially a dolphin or shark, or something like that moving across the bottom of the water,” Mr Booth said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Wildlife rangers have taken to the water and dispatched drones as the search continues. (Supplied: DETSI)<\/p>\n

Yesterday Mr Graham told the ABC he had spent time fishing off northern Queensland and had seen crocodiles on the fish-finder monitor before.<\/p>\n

The habitat for Queensland crocodiles is thought to end at Gladstone’s Boyne River, about 300km north of Noosa.<\/p>\n

In recent months a crocodile was euthanased at Mary River<\/a> and another was photographed at Inskip Point.<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/p>\n

Craig Franklin, pictured here with Steve Irwin, says it is not unheard for crocodiles to stray significant distances from their usual habitats. (Supplied: Craig Franklin)<\/p>\n

University of Queensland professor Craig Franklin said there were sometimes “stragglers” outside traditional crocodile habitats because a larger male has forced them out of their territory.<\/p>\n

Professor Franklin said there were historical cases of crocodiles recorded as far south as the Brisbane and Logan rivers.<\/p>\n

He said the reptiles generally made their way back north to warmer waters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Authorities are continuing to search for a crocodile reportedly seen in a Sunshine Coast waterway, hundreds of kilometres…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,14794,14800,14798,11944,14795,14793,14797,14796,14799,128,338],"class_list":["post-13078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-crocodiles-in-queensland","tag-crocwise","tag-detsi","tag-fish-finder","tag-noosa-croc-hunt","tag-noosa-crocodile","tag-noosa-crocodile-sighting","tag-noosa-river","tag-queensland-wildlife-rangers","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}