by
Maryland Wilson B.A. (Hons) Psychology,President of the Australian
Wildlife Protection Council, National/International Kangaroo
Campaign Coordinator, NSW Kangaroo Management Advisory Committee.
Take
a protected species under the protection of the Department of
the Environment, call it a resource, increase the killing, and
you have the largest wildlife slaughter in the world today.
The Oxford dictionary defines protect: Keep safe, defend, guard
(person or thing from or against danger, injury, disadvantage
etc.) It's an extreme misuse of the word when relating
it to kangaroos.
The
world community and the Australian people are told that kangaroos
need to be killed for damage mitigation. This is a total misrepresentation
of the truth, which is consistently propagandised by both Federal
and State Governments. The official policy of Environment Australia
is: "Australian native wildlife is a renewable resource.
If managed in an ecologically sustainable manner, wildlife can
provide a perpetual source of economic benefits for all Australians".
No
one knows exactly the year, because it was introduced by stealth,
but the renewable resource component is now included in all
State Kangaroo Management Programs (KMP). The "natural
resource management is one of the most important issues today",
according to the NSW Department of Agriculture. The aims and
objectives of the Kangaroo Management Programs in Queensland,
New South Wales and South Australia is to harvest kangaroos
as a renewable resource.
".if
managed in an ecologically sustainable manner."
the trouble is that no one knows what is sustainable and the
two worst States, South Australia and Queensland, have a kangaroo
killing regime which is a direct threat to the survival of the
Red Kangaroo. In fact, in South Australia, the harvest is based
on regional quotas, like New South Wales, but tags are transferable,
which may lead to some areas receiving very high harvest rates,
like Queensland.
If
one considers the computer simulation model from H. J. Lavery's
"The Kangaroo Keepers" (1985), there are indicators
of a population reaching a signal point where the population
enters a critical phase when rate of population decline accelerates
significantly to extermination.this latter is when the harvest
is 50% female, and the population is reduced to about one-half
its original size and that numbers
alone present an uncertain basis for management.
The
kangaroo industry has received unprecedented support and funding
from economic rationalists who are destroying the very fabric
of wildlife protection in Australia.
The
Australian scientific community is ignoring the most basic premise
of sound objective science by turning a blind eye to the killing
of the biggest and best kangaroos, designed by nature to maintain
a healthy gene pool and their biological fitness. This is a
breed of scientist who supports the escalating slaughter and
is giving scant attention, if any consideration to the extreme
cruelty, inherent in the kangaroo killing industry, except to
pay it lip service. They have commissioned the RSPCA to tell
us what we already know, that this is a brutally cruel industry
which is impossible to police, and leaves behind a million or
more dead joeys every year.
They
are incapable of addressing the fate of the ex-pouch joeys,
which are still dependent upon their mothers for survival, but
which escape to face a lingering death, when their mothers are
shot. They dismiss the repugnance demonstrated by the international
community of kangaroo killing, of stomping on joeys or bashing
joeys to death.
THE
FACT IS THAT NO ONE TAKES RESPONSIBILITY FOR
CRUELTY TO KANGAROOS.
THE
FACT IS THAT NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE
yet the killing continues to escalate! Wildlife gene researcher,
Senior veterinarian and Project Leader of the Animal Gene Storage
Resource Centre of Australia, Dr. Ian Gunn warns, "Really,
we don't know, no one knows the effect of killing a high percentage
of the larger males or females out of a population" and
"Removing the dominant males who did most of the breeding
would allow less healthy males to become the main source of
genes".
THE
FACT IS THAT KANGAROOS ARE BEING KILLED SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY
ARE THERE FOR THE TAKING, with no thought for the ramifications
of such abuse.
THE
FACT IS that our myopic, self-serving
scientific community have long supported and continue to support
the killing of the biggest and best kangaroos by the commercial
kangaroo industry for profit with no regard for the ramifications
or consequences of such intolerable abuse.
THE
FACT IS that the professional kangaroo
shooters target the biggest males because this type of animal
earns him the most money. As a result, the number of females
in kangaroo populations increases and so do the number of joeys
born each year but shooters completely disregard the age and
sex structure of mobs when harvesting. The kangaroo industry
claims that this is sustainable but they leave behind unstable,
unfit, unhealthy populations to breed next years' crop.
THE
FACT IS that if you disrupt in a short
period of time the normal reproduction processes, that have
evolved over tens of thousands of years, you are in danger
of putting the species at risk. Precedents have been set
in other parts of the world where large populations of a species
(seals, bison, wolves, etc) have faced extinction after widespread
and destructive 'culling" programs. Many of these species
suffered incursion of exotic bacterias and viruses when their
populations contained a critical and unsustainable gene pool.
THE
FACT IS that the use of the word culling
is the biggest misnomer of all, because the kangaroo industry
does not remove the old, sick, diseased, lame and infirm animals.
it removes the BIGGEST and BEST kangaroos. This is not
culling. It is slaughter!
We
are witnessing a carnage of unsustainable proportions for commercial
gain. Populations are being reduced to alarming levels in many
regions and the species is subjected to ever increasing kill
quotas. The more kangaroos that are killed, the more there are
and the cry goes out to kill more and more.
"We need to know the effect of the slaughter of large male
kangaroos on the future viability of the population, especially
as the industry is now calling for the right to slaughter smaller
and smaller animals all the time" , says Dr. Ian Gunn.
"People from the industry are reaping the profits without
putting anything back."
The
kangaroo industry brings shame to Australia and is threatening
the species. The commercial killing of kangaroos must end. There
are humane non-consumptive alternatives to the kangaroo killing
industry but the 'sustainable use' theorists ignore the 'myth
of the sustainable use of wildlife and its almost unbroken record
of failure'. "The Kangaroo BETRAYED!" is the signal
of crisis!
