![\"Kakadu](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/a4dc948f-ccfd-4c29-8188-a2011fb6923b.jpeg\")
Kakadu National Park is world-famous for its ancient rock art galleries, vast wetlands and a high concentration of crocodiles. (Tourism Australia)<\/p>\nFour men are facing charges of stealing hundreds of crocodile eggs from a world-famous national park.<\/p>\n
Pilot Sebastian Robinson along with Timothy Luck, Dean Larsen and Stephen Slark are all charged with taking, keeping and moving a species from Kakadu National Park in February 2024.<\/p>\n
A company, SDRL Pty Ltd, operating under the name Kinga Contracting, is also charged with obtaining a financial advantage by deception in relation to the case.<\/p>\n
Kakadu National Park is world-famous for its ancient rock art galleries, vast wetlands and a high concentration of crocodiles. (Tourism Australia)<\/p>\n
The egg-stealing charges follow a joint investigation by Parks Australia, the Australian Federal Police and the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Commission.<\/p>\n
Legal crocodile egg collecting in the Northern Territory provides eggs to crocodile farms and involves helicopter pilots lowering a man on a line onto nests to do the collecting in remote wetlands.<\/p>\n
In the Darwin Local Court today Ruth Champion, appearing for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, said the charges of illegally taking crocodile eggs involved serious offending.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“We’re not talking about one, two or three, but something in the hundreds.”<\/p>\n
Champion also noted the impact of the alleged egg stealing on Traditional Owners and the cultural harm felt by them.<\/p>\n
Defence lawyer Thomas Clelland told the court the matter was a complicated one involving the complex area of DNA analysis.<\/p>\n
Judge Elizabeth Morris set a five-day hearing from November 30 to December 4, with 10 witnesses to be called.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four men are facing charges of stealing hundreds of crocodile eggs from a world-famous national park. Pilot Sebastian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-606721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606721","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=606721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}