Indonesia's Crocodile Crisis: The Deadly Cost of Tin Mining for Smartphones

A Fatal Encounter in a Mining Pond

Five-year-old Chaca was bathing with her parents near their home in Indonesia's Bangka Belitung Islands Province on a Saturday afternoon in January 2025 when a saltwater crocodile seized her from the bank of an abandoned mining pond. Army personnel, police and community rescue teams searched for the child. Her body was found floating nearby the following morning.

Months earlier, Jauhari, a fisher aged 40, had been killed in Menduk village in western Bangka. He was likely the 21st person killed by estuarine crocodiles in that area over five years. By April 2025, four people had died in crocodile attacks in the province that year.

These deaths connect a local struggle for water and livelihoods with the global demand for tin, a metal used in smartphones and other electronics. Mining has damaged rivers and mangroves while leaving thousands of waterlogged pits where crocodiles and people increasingly meet.

CrocAttack, an international database tracking human encounters with crocodiles, recorded more than 1,000 attacks across Indonesia between 2013 and 2023, resulting in 486 deaths. Those figures placed Indonesia at the center of the world's crocodile attack crisis. Bangka Belitung, a province rich in tin off Sumatra's southeastern coast, accounted for nearly 90 incidents. Attacks in remote communities may go unreported, leaving the true toll higher.

For residents, the danger is woven into ordinary tasks: bathing, collecting water, fishing and washing tin ore. For crocodiles, the same places offer food and shelter after mining and land clearance have damaged their natural homes. The result is repeated contact between people who need these waters and predators capable of killing them.

How Mining Pits Bring Crocodiles Inland

Bangka's abandoned mining pits are known locally as kulongs. Illegal miners dig for tin ore by hand or with basic machinery, then leave the excavated ground behind. Rain and groundwater fill the holes, creating artificial pools far inland from natural waterways.

Floods can trap fish and crabs in these pools. Crocodiles displaced from mangroves by deforestation and mining follow the food into the kulongs. People enter the same water to bathe, fish or work, bringing daily life into places now occupied by large predators.

Bangka Island, smaller than Puerto Rico, has roughly 1.5 million residents. About 80 percent depend on tin mining for their livelihoods. Thousands of abandoned pits have transformed the landscape into something researchers describe as resembling the lunar surface.

Saltwater crocodiles, also called estuarine crocodiles, once occupied Bangka's estuaries and mangrove swamps in relative isolation from settlements. An estuary is where river water meets the sea. Mangroves grow along these coastal waters, providing habitat for crocodiles and the fish and other animals they eat.

Local people call the crocodiles puaka, reflecting traditional beliefs that they guarded every swamp and estuary and ruled over the fish and shrimp within their territory. Villagers avoided rivers where the animals lived. Crocodiles rarely entered settlements, apart from occasional strays.

Mining and changes in land use have broken down that separation. Natural waterways have become damaged habitats, while abandoned excavations have become new places for crocodiles to live close to homes and workplaces.

A Powerful Predator With a Strong Homing Instinct

The saltwater crocodile, Crocodylus porosus, is the world's largest living reptile. Adult males can exceed 7 meters, or 23 feet, and weigh nearly 1,000 kilograms, or 2,200 pounds. They can live for more than 70 years and sit at the top of their food chain.

These animals also have strong attachments to their territories and powerful homing instincts. Crocodiles moved hundreds of kilometers can return to their native habitats. Moving a captured animal therefore presents a difficult problem when the place it came from is also a place where people live and work.

Crocodile activity is affected by temperature because their metabolism responds to changes in their surroundings. Warmer water associated with climate change may increase activity. At the same time, extended droughts can leave residents without water at home and push them toward rivers or mining pits occupied by crocodiles.

Habitat damage, the animals' search for food and people's need for water bring these pressures together. The danger grows where communities have few alternatives to using the same waters.

Why Smartphone Tin Matters to Bangka

Tin is used in solder, the material that joins components and circuit boards in electronic devices. Indonesia is the world's second largest tin producer after China, and approximately 90 percent of its production comes from the Bangka Belitung Islands.

Major technology brands have historically sourced tin from the province for smartphones and other products. Apple and Samsung have faced scrutiny over sourcing from Bangka, where investigations traced the metal from muddy riverbanks into electronics supply chains.

Demand for consumer electronics supports tin prices that make illegal mining attractive despite its dangers. Bangka's dependence on mining means that environmental damage and household income are closely connected: the activity that changes the landscape is also the activity many residents rely on to earn a living.

Indonesia's democratization in 1998 and the decentralization of resource governance gave provincial authorities control over mining operations. Legislation in 2001 granted citizens the right to mine tin. Illegal mining sites then increased fourfold within three years, spreading into protected forests, mangrove reserves and concessions held by state owned enterprises.

More than 60 percent of Bangka's land area has been converted into mining operations. Over one third of its ancient forests disappeared in just over two decades. Oil palm plantations have also replaced traditional crops and humid forests across the upper Menduk River basin.

Drainage canals associated with those plantations provide routes for crocodiles to approach settlements. Around the Menduk wetlands, 1,000 hectares of oil palm plantations and 250 illegal mining sites occupy land that once supported the area's water systems and wildlife.

Corruption and Damage to Rivers

Indonesian prosecutors disclosed an investigation in 2024 into alleged corruption involving the state owned tin mining company PT Timah. Described as potentially the country's largest corruption investigation, it concerned illegal mining across Bangka between 2015 and 2022 and environmental damage estimated at $18 billion.

Investigators alleged that PT Timah leased smelters and bought illegally extracted material while profits were directed to senior officials through fake transactions. Smelters process ore into usable metal, making them an important point between extraction and sale.

Problems in enforcement extended beyond mining companies. In 2014, four Indonesian police officers were discovered aboard a vessel carrying 134 containers of illegally extracted tin bound for Singapore. Corruption has enabled mining to enter protected mangrove forests and national parks, including habitats occupied by crocodiles.

Heavy machinery and explosives used in open pit mining produce large waste piles that change soil properties and the movement of water. Sediment from mining has drastically reduced river flows and affected coral reefs that serve as nurseries for fish.

Mining sediment also prevents crab and shrimp eggs from developing. These losses reduce the crocodiles' natural food supply, adding pressure for the animals to move toward settlements. Runoff pollutes waters where human communities and crocodiles are competing for shrinking resources.

Asari, the village head of Jada Bahrin in Bangka, resigned in March, citing pressure to approve illegal tin mining spreading along the Menduk River. Residents also described forests being cleared for oil palm cultivation, with wetlands deteriorating and fish stocks declining.

The damage links activities upstream with danger elsewhere along the river. Forest clearance, drainage, waste and sediment change where water flows and where food survives, while abandoned pits create new places for crocodiles to encounter people.

Attacks During Work and Daily Chores

A study published in Biological Conservation in 2023 documented 665 crocodile attack cases across Indonesia in press reports covering 2017 to 2019. It identified Indonesia as the country with the most such incidents. CrocAttack's longer record counted more than 1,000 attacks and 486 deaths between 2013 and 2023.

Research on Bangka Belitung found that nearly one third of attacks occurred in active or former tin mines. Another figure showed that 16.5 percent happened to people who were actively mining. The first describes the location of an attack; the second describes what a person was doing.

Rozi, a religious teacher aged 54 from Telak Village, was bathing in the Antan River after a day of mining in November 2020 when a crocodile attacked him. The animal twisted his body and tore flesh from his left calf. Nearly three years later, he still could not walk normally.

Rozi described how the fear continued long after his physical injuries:

I am traumatized by even looking at a picture of a crocodile or passing through a waterlogged ditch,

Rozi now limps and cannot return to mining. He has no alternative livelihood: pepper farming has become economically unviable, while growing oil palm requires capital he does not have.

Sariah, a resident aged 54, went to collect water from a mining pit in September 2023 after a prolonged drought dried up her well. A crocodile measuring 3 meters dragged her into the water. She survived by fighting back.

Sariah described the attack's continuing effect on her sleep:

Sometimes when I sleep, the attack comes back to me in my dreams,

Five days after Sariah's attack, another miner suffered injuries to the head and shoulder while washing tin ore in a similar pit. The encounters show how work and essential household tasks expose residents to danger, while survivors can face lasting pain, fear and lost income.

A Rescue Center With No Room Left

The Alobi Foundation operates Bangka Island's only wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center. Founded in 2014, it stands on land reclaimed by PT Timah and houses 34 saltwater crocodiles in an enclosure roughly half the size of a tennis court.

Some arrive with wounds from machetes, fish hooks or gunshots inflicted by communities seeking revenge after attacks. Alobi has reached capacity and cannot accept more animals or safely release those already in its care.

Langka Sani, the foundation's founder, receives as many as seven calls a day reporting crocodile sightings or conflicts. He described how sharply the frequency of calls had changed:

In the past, we might never hear of a crocodile attack in a year, whereas now in the last two weeks there have been dozens of reports of crocodile cases,

Authorities transported some crocodiles to South Sumatra in 2021. Their homing instincts make relocation difficult, while Bangka has no estuaries free of conflict where the rescued animals can be released.

Sani explained why release on the island was not possible:

Releasing crocodiles on Bangka Island itself is not possible because the crocodile habitat is very damaged [as a result of human encroachment into the estuarine area] and no longer beautiful,

Endi R. Yusuf, the rescue center's manager, said the facility receives no direct government funding. It relies on donations and sometimes on dead cattle supplied by local farmers to feed the crocodiles.

Yusuf described the daily work of responding to animals in danger or near communities:

We fight every day to save [the animals] or evacuate them,

The sanctuary has identified intact wetlands in Central Bangka district as possible conservation zones. Finding a safe place to release crocodiles remains a problem, leaving the crowded center caring for animals with nowhere suitable to go.

Restoration Promises and an Unsigned Decree

Local authorities now allow miners to seek licenses for operations that were previously illegal, with habitat restoration required as a condition. Weak enforcement has left much of that restoration unfulfilled.

Amir Syahbana, a local official overseeing energy and mineral resources, acknowledged that reclamation duties range from planting trees to managing waste. Less than 10 percent of degraded land was reclaimed in 2023. Reclamation means repairing land damaged by mining so that it can support vegetation and other uses again.

Provincial officials announced plans in February 2024 to revise a dormant task force established in 2020 to manage conflicts between people and crocodiles. The announcement followed investigative reporting by journalists Finlan Adhitya Aldan and Bayu Asya Isminanda.

The proposed decree would bring PT Timah, private mining companies and BRIN, the state research agency, into the task force and allocate money for conservation. As of April 2025, it was still on the governor's desk awaiting signature. No later decision or signing date was given.

The main developments span years of expanding mining, attacks and attempts to respond:

• 1998: Democratization and decentralization shifted control over mining operations to provincial authorities.
• 2001: Legislation granted citizens the right to mine tin; illegal sites increased fourfold within three years.
• 2014: Alobi was founded, and four police officers were discovered aboard a ship carrying 134 containers of illegal tin toward Singapore.
• November 2020: Rozi was attacked in the Antan River after mining. A provincial task force was also established in 2020.
• 2021: Authorities moved some crocodiles to South Sumatra.
• September 2023: Sariah survived an attack while collecting water after her well dried up.
• February 2024: Officials announced plans to revise the crocodile conflict task force.
• 2024: Prosecutors disclosed the PT Timah corruption investigation concerning activities between 2015 and 2022.
• January 2025: Chaca was killed at an abandoned mining pond.
• April 2025: Four deaths had occurred that year, and the revised task force decree remained unsigned.

Protecting Habitat Where Crocodiles Live

Researchers recommend preserving crocodile habitat in situ, meaning in the places where the animals naturally live, rather than continuing to rely on relocation. That approach addresses the damaged rivers and wetlands driving animals into mining pits and settlements.

Brandon Sideleau, a wildlife biologist who founded CrocAttack, identified possible conservation areas around the Baturusa River and Pice Dam using satellite imagery. Establishing those zones would require barring human activity entirely, creating a difficult choice for communities that depend on mining and fishing.

Jessix Amundian, director of the local nonprofit Tumbek for Earth, argued that designating protected areas must be accompanied by repairs to the wider environment:

What is needed is not just to create or designate a conservation area for estuarine crocodiles, but to also restore the condition of the rivers, swamps and mangroves,

The Menduk wetlands illustrate the scale of that task. Their 1,000 hectares of oil palm plantations and 250 illegal mining sites continue to generate conditions that bring crocodiles and people together. Restoring habitat means dealing with those pressures, alongside the abandoned pits that have become sources of both water and danger.

Bangka's crisis connects damaged habitat, dependence on mining, limited water choices and weak enforcement. Rescue teams can remove individual animals, but the crowded Alobi center and the shortage of safe release sites show why protecting communities also requires restoring places where crocodiles can live away from daily human activity.

The Essentials

• CrocAttack recorded more than 1,000 attacks and 486 deaths across Indonesia between 2013 and 2023; nearly 90 incidents occurred in Bangka Belitung.
• Abandoned tin mining pits draw crocodiles inland, where people bathe, fish, collect water and wash ore.
• Approximately 90 percent of Indonesia's tin production comes from Bangka Belitung. Tin is used in solder for smartphones and other electronics.
• Prosecutors alleged that PT Timah supported illegal mining between 2015 and 2022, with environmental damage estimated at $18 billion.
• Alobi houses 34 crocodiles, has reached capacity and receives no direct government funding.
• Less than 10 percent of degraded land was reclaimed in 2023.
• Four deaths had occurred in 2025 by April, when a revised crocodile conflict task force decree remained unsigned.
• Researchers and conservation advocates call for protected habitat and restoration of rivers, swamps and mangroves.