Africa’s great crocodile hunter saluted his Australian counterpart on Monday, saying the death of Steve Irwin by a stingray barb was an ”unfitting” end for the fearless showman.
”I’m very upset to hear about it. I know that he led a dangerous life but it just doesn’t seem right that a fish should kill him… It is an unfitting death for him,” said Khalid Hassen, who has shot dead over 17 000 African crocodiles in a hunting career which has spanned over four decades.
”I thought he would perhaps get mauled by a crocodile but a stingray?,” Hassen said in an interview with Reuters by telephone from Blantyre, the commercial capital of Malawi.
Irwin died on Monday after a stingray barb pierced his chest as he was filming an underwater documentary.
Irwin grew up near crocodiles in Australia, trapping and removing them from populated areas and releasing them in his parent’s park. His wildlife documentaries and daring adventures brought him global fame.
Hassen, a successful Malawian businessman, has probably killed more crocodiles than anyone else but he said he had huge respect for Irwin and his non-lethal methods of trapping the big reptiles.
”He was a conservationist and I’m a hunter, I’m a killer,” said Hassen, who hunts at night by boat with a heavy calibre rifle in the waterways of southern Malawi, where dozens of peasants are attacked each year by man-eating crocodiles.
Hassen gives the meat to the locals and sells the skins.
He described Irwin as fearless.
”Nobody else has done what he did. He was really an outstanding person, he was fearless,” said Hassen.
”When he came to Africa he went into game parks and approached lions on a kill and he approached rhinos. Deep down he must have known that there was an element of great risk in what he was doing,” he said.
”Crocodiles are very unpredictable. They are like sharks in the ocean, you never know when they are going to strike.”
But Hassen, a recognised wildlife expert himself, said Irwin knew what he was doing and had a deep understanding of wildlife.
”He was a showman but he had a great knowledge of all these things,” Hassen said. – Reuters