Kangaroo Archives 21
The Harvest Period for Red Kangaroos in the Queensland Eastern Region closed at 12 noon on Saturday the 16th September 2006. Section 5 of the Nature Conservation (Macropod Harvesting Period) Notice 2006 provides the Chief Executive of the Environmental Protection Agency the power to close a harvest period for macropods if he is satisfied that the maximum number of macropod species for a relevant region will have been taken by a particular day. The Chief Executive is satisfied that the quota will be at capacity for the following species by this closure date: 1. Red Kangaroo (Macropus rufus) in the Eastern Region. This closure is effective for the following local government areas, Banana, Bauhinia, Beaudesert, Belyando, Biggenden, Boonah, Bowen, Broadsound, Burdekin, Burnett, Caboolture, Calliope, Cambooya, Cardwell, Chinchilla, Clifton, Crows Nest, Croydon, Dalrymple, Duaringa, Eidsvold, Emerald, Esk, Etheridge, Fitzroy, Gatton, Gayndah, Herberton, Inglewood, Isis, Jericho, Jondaryan, Kilcoy, Kilkivan, Kingaroy, Kolan, Laidley, Livingstone, Millmerran, Mirani, Miriam Vale, Monto, Mount Morgan, Mundubbera, Murgon, Nanango, Nebo, Peak Downs, Perry, Rosalie, Sarina, Stanthorpe, Tiaro, Wambo, Warwick, Wondai, and Woocoo. No further recreational or commercial harvest of this macropod species in these areas is provided for from 16th September 2006 until the declaration of a new Harvest Period. NSw closed early too, as they shot their quota. Thisis thefirst time for decades that theqotas have been reached, and reached early. Why? The quota is decided on numbers, not weights. Because the kangaroos shot are so small they cant provide the weight to fill overseas orders, so they have shot more of them. 80% of kangaroos now shot are females, and of that 80%, 70% are close to the minimum weight of 13 kilos, barely old enough to have had a joey. Sustainable Industry? I dont think so! ********************* Wallabies Tasmanian wallaby pelts are expected to be used to make Italian fur coats and cheap fur-trimmed clothing in China. A wildlife group backed by the Irwin family has lost its legal bid against plans to shoot wallabies and pademelons on King and Flinders islands. Primary Industries Minister David Llewellyn reaffirmed yesterday that plans to export skins would be expanded to all of Tasmania. The Wildlife Protection Association of Australia, formed with the help of the late Steve Irwin, launched an appeal against Commonwealth approval of the plans in December. "Although there is still another hearing to determine some matters, we failed in our appeal to stop the kill," WPAA president Pat O'Brien said yesterday. The WPAA argued the use of .22 rifles was inhumane because they were less accurate than higher-powered weapons and often only wounded the animals. "Not a murmur was made about the fact that many animals are shot at distances greater than 50m and outside the reliable range of the .22 rimfire and not a murmur about the 18 per cent miss rate," Mr O'Brien said. "This shows up the weakness of the federal Environment Biodiversity and Conservation Act when it comes to protecting wildlife." Veterinarian and game shooter Paul Hopwood told the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in Brisbane he believed the Federal Government made a serious error of judgment. Dr Hopwood argued more powerful guns, such as .222 rifles, would work more effectively and humanely over distances greater than 50m. But the three-person panel ruled against the appeal on Friday, saying it was satisfied the management plans promoted humane treatment of wallabies. The panel found .22 rifles were appropriate for use at distances of less than 50m. Mr O'Brien said the organisation could not afford to challenge the decision but would continue lobbying for change. Against Animal Cruelty Tasmania said the decision was disappointing but not surprising. "I am still saddened and sickened at what this means for our native animals," AACT co-ordinator Yvette Watt said. Mr Llewellyn said plans were proceeding to export skins from all over Tasmania that otherwise would be left to waste. Tasmania's Field and Game Association said professional hunters posed a far kinder alternative than 1080 poison. The Animal Management Plans allow for 15,000 wallabies and 18,000 pademelons to be culled on Flinders Island and 40,000 on King Island each year. *Mercury **************************
Wallabies in Tasmania are often wounded by "gut shots" that leave them to die painfully and slowly, says veterinarian David Obendorf. And joeys were often left to die, in contravention of Tasmania's shooting code of practice. "I'd say 60 per cent of wallabies are hit with gut shots (in the stomach). It's a bigger target, but a headshot is the quickest death," Dr Obendorf said. "I have photos taken the day after culls by qualified shooters where the young have been left and the shots are in the stomach." Dr Obendorf's comments come after a wildlife group lost its appeal against killing methods used on King and Flinders islands. The decision last week paves the way for commercial kills around Tasmania and exports of hides to make clothes in China and Italy. During hearings in Brisbane, veterinarian Paul Hopwood told the court Tasmania's use of .22 shotguns was unacceptable because of high wounding rates. Dr Obendorf said he had often seen the hindquarters torn off an animal and the rest of the body left behind. "Often wallabies are used to feed dogs, so they don't worry about hitting them in the stomach," he said. "The problem is, with the drop in devils, the remains are left so other scavengers come in, including crows. It's contributing to a whole change in the ecology." Tasmanian Field and Game Association president Peter Darke said most people did the right thing and a commercial kill would be a humane death -- far kinder than 1080 poison. "There's already a code of practice and anybody with an ounce of humanity checks the pouch when shooting and if there's a joey there, they dispatch it," he said. "(For game export) you've got approved professionals and these fellows are real marksmen. It's not shotguns." Dr Obendorf said many did not follow the code. Several wildlife parks in Tasmania have confirmed they had received bags of joeys, some of them dead, dumped at their gates.*Mercury ******************** A badly beaten kangaroo found in the back of a car by police in Sydney's west last night has died. Officers found the distressed animal thrashing about in the back seat of an abandoned Holden Barina at Northern Road, Cranebrook, at 10.18pm, after being called to investigate a car driving around in a fenced off area. The animal was bleeding from head wounds, and later tests at a veterinary hospital showed the kangaroo also had a broken foot and broken ribs. The kangaroo died soon after being admitted to the hospital, police said. Inspector Greg Byrne of Penrith police said the car was not stolen and is being examined, but the owner of the vehicle has not yet been interviewed. Police urge people who saw anything in the area around 10pm or who may have any information to contact Penrith Police, (02) 4721 9444 or Crime Stoppers, 1800 333 000. ************************ Tasmania's King Island farmers want to start processing wallaby meat after the dismissal of an appeal against culling. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal ruled against the Wildlife Protection Association of Australia in its efforts to stop farmers shooting and exporting wallabies. Island land holder Hayden Bostock says the door is now open to develop the local industry. "It would employ local people, could then cryovac your product, put the King Island logo on there and bang off it goes," he said. "That would be the most sensible thing to do. "I think now the appeal is done and dusted something serious can be done there and it will just create a whole new industry for King Island."*ABC Rural ********************* A teenager has been charged over the death of a kangaroo, which was found in the back of an abandoned car in Sydney's west last night. Officers found the distressed animal thrashing about in the boot section of an abandoned Holden Barina hatchback at the former ADI site on Northern Road, Cranebrook, at 10.18pm. They had been called to investigate a car being driven around in a fenced off area. The female animal was bleeding from head wounds. Later tests at a veterinary hospital showed it also had a broken foot and broken ribs.It was put down two hours after being admitted to the hospital. Penrith Local Area Commander Superintendent Ben Feszczuk said a 19-year-old was arrested and questioned after police ran checks on the vehicle. He was later charged with aggravated cruelty to animals, three other animal cruelty charges, and a trespass offence. He's been granted bail to appear in Penrith Local Court on December 4. Witnesses told police a man was flicking the car lights on and off as he chased down a mob of kangaroos in the fenced-off area known for its wildlife. Supt Feszczuk said the site had up to 4000 kangaroos and emus that had been there for decades. The vet called to assist the injured animal, Mark Sayer of Railway Row Veterinary Clinic at Emu Plains, said he could not bear to watch the kangaroo cling hopelessly to life. "I had to put it down. You have got this poor creature suffering. What are you going to do - leave it and watch it for a couple of days and then it dies? "There was a lot of bleeding around the head and neck. She was kicking slightly when I arrived [about 11pm] at the scene but she wasn't moving around too much, I could tell she was quite heavily concussed and I sedated it. "This is terrible, I hate seeing any animal in pain, when it's done by one of our own kind ... " Dr Sayer was told by police that an iron bar was found in the car. He said it appeared the kangaroo had been run over and then hit on the head. "The police told me someone might have been after pet food. The animal was deliberately targeted. They have hit it about the head but they didn't put it out of its misery. It wasn't dead and that's even worse. "The ribs were broken. The whole left side of the animal was caved in. Its left hock [the ankle bone connecting the foot and leg] was mashed. "When they get an injury like that, they will never walk again properly, they'll try but they will hobble around in a lot of pain. I put it down about 1.30pm." Dr Sayer said he will decide today whether he has time to conduct a post-mortem examination on the animal. If not, the RSPCA will do it, he said. ************************** ABORIGINES might not have killed off the giant marsupials which once roamed Australia according to new findings from a fossil site on the Darling Downs. Debate has raged for years about whether the first Australians hunted the so-called megafauna to extinction. Aborigines were thought to have arrived about 40,000 years ago, the same time as giant kangaroos, wombats, goannas and the "marsupial lion" suddenly disappeared. However archeological digs near Warwick by a Queensland University of Technology team showed the megafauna died out because of climate change. "There were progressive megafauna extinctions. They didn't all die out at once like the blitzkrieg (hunting) theory would suggest," QUT researcher Gilbert Price said yesterday. "It was at least a two-stage extinction over a period about 40,000 to 50,000 years ago. These animals of the prehistoric Australian bush were the largest of their time and included gigantic wombats the size of cars, kangaroos that reached almost 2.5m tall and massive emus and goannas." *CM ************************* If you'd like to see a video of a fox attacking an adult wallaby, click on the Utbe link! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiTWwcfhrNI ******************************* Recovery plan for the bridled nailtail wallaby (Onychogalea fraenata) 2005-2009 (PDF - 318 KB) is now on the Federal Government's EPA website. About the recovery plan Bridled nailtail wallabies were apparently common west of the Great Divide at the time of European settlement. The range of the species has dramatically declined during the last one hundred years, with the only known significant population of the species occurring on Taunton National Park (Scientific) (149°11’E, 23°34’S) located near Dingo in central Queensland. A small, translocated population has been established on Idalia National Park (144°72’E, 24°70’S) and Avocet Nature Refuge (148°10’E, 23°50’S) and other translocations are currently underway. This national Recovery Plan for Onychogalea fraenata, details the species' distribution and biology, conservation status, threats, and recovery objectives and actions necessary to ensure its long-term survival. ************************* Achived Story. ABC 2004 Professor Gordon Grigg says Kangaroos are not at risk of extinction. The President of the Wildlife Protection Association, Pat O'Brien says that if we continue at our current rate of culling and hunting, red kangaroos could become extinct in 10 years with other species becoming seriously depleted. This claim has been refuted strongly however by Professor Gordon Grigg from the School of Life Science at the University of QLD. Professor Griggs has been studying kangaroo population ecology for the past 25 years and has participated in aerial kangaroo counts and has written various papers and reports on kangaroo management. Gordon Grigg says the kangaroo industry knows that is not their best interest to hunt the kangaroo population to extinction. “The kangaroo industry is interested in maintaining kangaroo numbers as high as possible, so there will continue to be plenty of kangaroos” Professor Grigg says kangaroo numbers are down at the moment, but that is due to drought conditions, not culling or hunting. “About 20 years ago there were similar big droughts, and we were tracking the numbers in South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland, and so we have good experience to base current population ecology on, and because of that…the National Parks and Wildlife Service have good data to base the current hunting quotas on” “There is no reason to think kangaroo numbers wont recover when the drought is over” says Grigg. * Archive ABC 2004 **************************** A recipe we have found for keeping the kangaroos off your garden or orchard. Take 6 eggs and one litre of water, Break the eggs into the water, mix it up, put in in a container ( with a lid) and leave it in a warm place (outside in the sun) to go off for a few days (about three will do). Mix this by now absolutely revolting mixture up with 25ml of white acrylic paint. (Any colour will do really, the idea is that you can see where you have sprayed). The paint helps the mixture stick to the leaves. Spray it on your fruit trees or garden. Its supposed to deter wallabies and kangaroos which do not like off protein. Meanwhile Perth-based researchers have stumbled on a successful, although unusual, way to frighten kangaroos - dingo wee. A team from Curtin University believes kangaroos recognise the smell of their long-time predator, the dingo, and steer clear. They hope to isolate the chemical, to create a product that keeps roos away from crops. Project manager Dr Michael Parsons says they first trialled the smell at a wildlife sanctuary and watched the kangaroos flee. "She walked out of the bathroom with a tube of urine in an evaporative canister and as soon as she got about five metres from them, they looked at her and immediately fled... and this was a whole mob of them," he said. "At that stage we thought we really need to design a proper trial to actually prove that dingo urine is working and scaring away the kangaroos." Instructions for use. First catch your dingo............ ********************** CANBERRA, Australia -- Australia's giant prehistoric animals, including three-metre- tall kangaroos and wombat-like creatures as big as a rhinoceros, were likely wiped out by aboriginal settlers, not climate change, a researcher said yesterday. New fossil evidence ruled out climate change as the cause, according an article published in the latest edition of the Geological Society of America's monthly journal, Geology. "If it wasn't climate, then it had to be humans," the article's author, Flinders University paleontologist Gavin Prideaux,said. AAP ************** A COMMON parasite can increase a women's attractiveness to the opposite sex but also make men more stupid, an Australian researcher says. About 40 per cent of the world's population is infected with Toxoplasma gondii. Human infection generally occurs when people eat raw or undercooked meat that has cysts containing the parasite. "The effect of infection is different between men and women," Sydney University of Technology infectious disease researcher Nicky Boulter writes in the latest Australasian Science magazine. "Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks ... and are deemed less attractive to women. "On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men. In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women behave like sex kittens." *AAP ************* We know there has been a lot of concern expressed about the media's lack of coverage of kangaroo and other wildlife losses in the Victorian, SA, and WA wildfires. Last week the ABC rang me, and did a story about the wildlife losses, and then Reuters rang as well. As a consequence we got stories up in the UK Telegraph, the London Times, Beijing News, NZ Herald, Rueters International, and probably more International newspapers that I havent noticed. I also did several radio interviews including Radio NZ, and Radio Los Angeles. (at one am!). I spoke about local extinctions as population numbers crashed after the fires, and the lack of food for the few animals that did survive. *WPAA ************* Tens of thousands of Victoria's native animals will form the bulk of casualties during predicted wildfire this weekend. Koalas in trees are likely to be the largest group of animals killed or seriously injured. Joining them as victims of uncontrollable blazes will be kangaroos, reptiles, birds, possums and echidnas. Wildlife Victoria volunteers have made an urgent appeal for money ahead of the expected demand for veterinary care, supplies, medicines, bandages, food, blankets and towels. Dozens of tireless animal carers are on standby, ready to meet what could be unprecedented demand for their expertise. "With the extent of fire we are seeing at the moment, thousands of animals will be affected and they will end up in our shelters," said Wildlife Victoria executive officer Sandy Fernee. "Our carers will be out there in their own cars, paying their own petrol, to do what they can for our precious wildlife caught in the fires. "Badly injured animals who cannot be saved will be humanely dispatched. "But many, many more will need long-term, intensive care by our dedicated team of trained wildlife carers." Ms Fernee said countless animals will be displaced, adding to their suffering after a decade of drought. "The human suffering in these fires has the potential to be horrific, in terms of suffering and loss. But the toll on our native animals could be catastrophic with most of the blazes in areas known to contain large wildlife populations." Call for help for injured wildlife on 0500 540 000 or 13 11 11 Wildlife carers will go into Victoria's High Country after the fires to search for injured animals. Koalas are expected to be the hardest hit. Possums, kangaroos, reptiles, birds and echidnas are also expected among the casualties. Donations to Wildlife Victoria can be made on 0431 478 081; calls about injured wildlife on 0500 540 000; and donations and calls about injured animals to Help for Wildlife on 0417 380 687. * Herald Sun ************** The Federal Government has approved Lenah Game Meats to be able to export Tasmanian wallabie skins killed under a State Management Plan. This is the first time that we are aware of that the Feds have done anything like this, and it does not bode well for our wildlife. What this means is that it sets a precedent, and now there is no reason why kangaroo skins, or possum skins, killed under a State pest control permit, could also be exported, and so avoid having to comply with the EPBC Act. Approval of this Wildlife Trade Operation allows the export of skins from Bennett's Wallabies currently harvested for the domestic meat market. The Government claims the proposal includes measures to ensure that the export of skins will not result in an increase in the number of Bennett's Wallabies killed, but in reality, thats not likely! Under Tasmanian State Permits, wallabies can be shot with .22 rifles, and dogs can be used to flush them from cover. Approval is for three years from the date of gazettal. The WTO was gazetted on 1 November 2006 and will be in force until 31 October 2009. For more information see http://www.deh.gov.au/biodiversity/trade-use/sources/operations/lenah-game-meats.html ************** A new page about Toxoplasmosis is now on the Kangaroo Coalition Website!
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