The Koorana Crocodile Farm has launched its 'Adopt a Croc' program to raise funds to feed 3, 000 hungry crocodiles, with only two weeks' worth of food left.
The farm's main income from the tourism industry is non-existent with its international export of skins halted by the COVID-19 lockdown in Italy.
On paper they are their crocs … every year we'll send them the result of the breeding of those crocs with the number of hatchlings, number of eggs, and we'll send them photographs of the crocs, Mr Lever said.
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We know we're not the only ones and we hate going out and asking for people to put their hands in their pockets, but there's no government program that fits what we have to do, he said.
We're hopeful that if people [are] wanting Koorana to stay in this area and can help us out, then certainly that will go a long way to buying some more food for the crocs.
They're going through the food fairly rapidly because the weather is still warm and crocodiles don't eat as much when the weather gets cooler, he said.
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If you don't feed them to the max they start biting each other and therefore they're ruining the skins, which will be worthless next year.
We are harvesting crocs as quickly as possible just simply to reduce the numbers on the farm so we don't have to feed so many.
The 10-hectare park in bushland at Yeppoon rescues and rehabilitates injured and abandoned wildlife — mostly using the money raised by park entry fees.
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Then because of the economic downturn from the bushfires, everyone was so supportive of us and they booked us all in for the Easter school holidays, ranger Kieron Smedley said.
We had record bookings that totalled around 15, 000 dollars of forward bookings and we thought, 'Yeah, this is going to pay for our January and February bill that the bushfires impacted on' — then this happened.
Even if we have no visitors coming through, our overheads are exactly the same as what they would be if we had 100 visitors through.
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As you can imagine the connection between the animals and the rangers and vice versa is a very strong bond, Mr Smedley said.
Food suppliers and the community have rallied behind the park but Mr Smedley said long-term financial support was what the park needed to stay operational.
We are still open for sick, injured, and orphaned wildlife … what people don't realise is each animal that gets brought in, it's quite a costly exercise, Mr Smedley said.
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Long term, we are needing State and Federal Governments to step on board and support the animals because, as you can imagine, every wildlife park is in the exact same situation.John Lever has been catching, nurturing, breeding, showing and selling crocodiles from his Queensland farm for almost 40 years, but don't go comparing him to Steve Irwin.
Born in Melbourne, Mr Lever, 77, opened one of Queensland's first crocodile farms in 1981 after studying at an agricultural college and then working at the CSIRO — a job he said became boring.
I got on really well with Bob and then when Steve started to grow up and got this passion about protection of everything — not conservation, protection of everything — he and I parted ways, Mr Lever said.
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Most people only want to conserve the things they love, only love the things they understand, and only understand those things they're prepared to share time and space with.
Mr Lever has provided a home to many wild crocodiles over the past 40 years with the help of his wife, Lillian, and four sons Simon, Matthew, Jason, and Adam.
It's a shame when you see these big powerful replicas of dinosaurs, survivors of the past, in their demise. It's really sad, Mr Lever said.
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Rocky was not your average crocodile. He spent the first part of his life as a family pet in the Torres Strait Islands.
He was caught in a fish bait trap on Thursday Island and the guy who caught him thought he looked so cute that he'd take it home and give it to his kids as a pet, Mr Lever said.
So the little crocodile went into the family home, was kept in the bathroom for a while and then as it got bigger they put him out in a tank, so they had a separate area for him.
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When you get a crocodile from the wild they get really spooked with household sounds like human conversation and music, the smells of a household … but here we had a crocodile [who had] grown up with all of that, Mr Lever said.
When he arrived here at 1.8 metres long and about 20 kilograms, we were astounded to find that he ate the next day and I thought, 'Wow, this is good'.
Walking up to his pen, he didn't rush to the water and try to hide. He just stayed out and looked at us lovingly and so he became one of our favourites really early on.
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Five-metre, one-tonne Rocky was raised as a pet in a family's bathroom on Thursday Island before coming to the crocodile farm. (Supplied: John Lever )
We started supplying crocodiles at about 70 centimetres long and then when that crocodile got to 1.2 metres long, they could send it back to us and we'd give them another one.
From our point of view, someone else is paying for the rearing of that crocodile and we get it back — because they're always kept on their own — in pristine condition, absolutely lovely condition and very quiet.
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We've already sold a five-metre one to Dubai, the one in Melbourne aquarium is ours, there's one in Istanbul as well, he said.
Selling crocodile skin and meat has been the farm's main focus for the past 40 years, but Mr Lever said his focus had changed.
Financially the international industry has had a downturn, and this is very sad for us at this stage because we've got all of these crocodiles on the farm ready to sell.
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We've got all this investment in these crocodiles and the amount of money we get for the skins won't even pay for the food that was spent over that four years, he said.