Kangamail, kangaroo newsletter, 10/7/07
The RSPCA is urging the Defence Department to be open and transparent about its plans to cull thousands of kangaroos in north Canberra. The Defence Department is holding a stakeholders meeting today after it was granted two licences to euthanase and shoot the roos but it's yet to publicly announce if it'll go ahead. The RSPCA is one of a number of intersted groups attending the meeting. The Chief Executive Michael Linke hopes all of the relevant issues are put on the table. "The RSPCA's hoping that all groups that come together get full access to all of the information and all of the evidence that the department of defence has and the ACT government has regarding the two sites. So we're hoping for a full exploration of the issues associated with the kangaroos at both Belconnen and Majura." he said *ABC ********************************** The Defence Department has shelved indefinitely a plan to shoot thousands of kangaroos at two military sites in the ACT. The proposal to cull nearly 4,000 eastern grey kangaroos drew protests from animal rights activists when it was made public in May. The department said it would defer a decision on the cull to learn more about long-term kangaroo management. Under the original plan, 2,800 kangaroos would have been killed on the Majura Training Area, a defence firing range complex outside Canberra. "Defence will monitor the size of the kangaroo population over the next six to 12 months and will also explore all options as part of longer term strategy," the department said in a statement. Another 1,000 were to be shot at the former naval radio transmitter site in the Belconnen area of northern Canberra. "At the Belconnen site, Defence will validate sustainable numbers and develop further management options." The decision was made after consulting with stakeholders. Defence had proposed using licensed approved shooters to cull the kangaroos because of overgrazing and a risk of the animals starving. The ACT government supported the idea. Animal rights groups have said the estimated numbers of kangaroos at the sites was exaggerated. A 2004 cull in which 1,000 kangaroos were shot around Canberra's Googong catchment attracted attention worldwide. * AAP ************************************* ACT Greens MLA Deb Foskey says a decision to abandon the culling of kangaroos at two Defence sites in Canberra will hurt them. She said the new development was worrying, because the original problem of how to sustain the population remained. "I initially questioned the need to cull so many kangaroos, (but) I have formed a clear view that the ecological arguments for it are overwhelming," the MLA said. "It is worrying that many people who are concerned about the welfare of the kangaroos may in fact be prepared to let them starve in a false understanding of what is good for them." "Some decisions are difficult to make, both politically and for fear of doing harm - but in this case, it seems that shooting may have been the kindest and swiftest option." Dr Foskey said the cull was probably called off because it was "too political" in an election year. She said the ACT government and other land managers now needed to work out a sustainable management plan for kangaroos. "Everything should be on the table, including consideration of our restriction against allowing a certain number of kangaroos - decided from year to year with the emphasis on the well-being of the animals and the sustainable level of their numbers - and setting up a sanctuary, perhaps on the Belconnen site, as a place where kangaroos can be seen in their natural environment," she said. "We have to get smarter about this." IBN News Ed Comment; A bigger worry is how this person Foskey got into Government in the first place! ***************************************** In March last year, winds of up to 240km/h tore through northern Queensland's tropical rainforests, reducing large areas to an environmental rubble described by locals as ''coleslaw and sticks.'' Cyclone Larry left a damage bill estimated at more than $1 billion, including a 159km wide trail of destruction across the Great Barrier Reef. Its fierce winds cut a swathe through the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, ripping open the forest canopy. Australia's rare rainforest possums and tree- kangaroos faced a slow death from starvation and thousands of birds and bats were killed. As Paul Hogan's laconic and iconic character, Mick ''Crocodile'' Dundee might have said, now that's an ecological disaster. Canberra, some perspective, please. A mob of eastern grey kangaroos grazing on an army combat training area doesn't compare on the national eco-disaster scale to the devastation caused by continuing land clearing for new suburbs, weed proliferation in national parks, fox predation of native wildlife, or the environmental legacy of natural disasters such as Cyclone Larry or the recent East Gippsland floods. This week's decision by the Australian Defence Department not to go ahead with plans to cull 2800 eastern grey kangaroos at its Majura training site should have been hailed as a victory for commonsense and community relations. In contrast with the ACT Government's ostentatious but shallow flirtations with the processes of community consultation, Defence has shown genuine willingness to listen to the environmental concerns of local residents. Its representatives haven't belitted concerns over animal welfare and appear to have astutely recognised local wildlife carers volunteers who treat and relocate injured animals may have the necessary experience to offer a compassionate and intelligent solution. An increasing number of Australians are horrified by the brutal slaughter of kangaroo culls, and the de-humanising effect they inevitably have on the people who carry them out. Ask ex-roo shooters or rural police about the domestic violence, alcoholism and mental health problems that are a too-frequent legacy of these bush abattoirs-on-the-run. Any debate over culling quickly turns to the inhumane methods used to dispatch pouch-young or pinkys decapitation with an axe or knife or smashing the skull with a hammer and starvation of young-at-foot joeys if the mother is shot. There is a growing consensus that there must be a better way to manage, and live with, kangaroo populations. Following the decision not to proceed with the Majura cull, there have been near-hysterical claims that kangaroos are leaving endangered lizards with ''nothing to eat and nowhere to hide'' as they graze grasslands down to bare dirt. But are kangaroos solely responsible for ''trashing'' the habitat of the earless dragon, legless lizard and golden sun moth? Might there also be an impact from trucks, tanks, platoons of heavy-booted soldiers and detonation of ammunition and explosives? Where's the environmental impact statement assessing the army's contribution to the degradation of the Majura grasslands? This sudden outpouring of concern for the earless dragon and the golden sun moth also has more than a whiff of hypocrisy and selective political opportunism about it. If there is such concern for the fate of the golden sun moth, why hasn't there been an outcry from Canberra's grassland evangelists over trashing of the moth's habitat by the Anglican Church? Moth habitat in the grounds of St John's church in Braddon is being rented out as a public carpark. There are also plans to develop the site as a ''Champs-Elysees-style'' retail and commercial precinct as part of the Griffin Legacy. But when it comes to tackling the combined forces of the Anglican Church (what was that about all creatures great and small) and the National Capital Authority, the silence is deafening from this newly- vocal band of grassland devotees. The ACT Government is poised to allow developers to clear 600ha of endangered yellow box woodlands to build McMansions in the Molonglo Valley. The same voices, baying for a kangaroo cull at Majura to save endangered species, are strangely silent on that project too. The Majura firing-range is not managed as grasslands reserve, but as military training ground. If its environmental values are way too precious to be compromised by grazing kangaroos, then perhaps Defence shouldn't be allowing soldiers to be trampling tussocks and scaring poor little earless dragons back down their burrows. But it's easier to frame the roos as ecological vandals. The management of kangaroo populations in Canberra is primarily a planning issue and needs to be addressed by long-term solutions such as creating a network of wildlife corridors to allow the animals to move freely and disperse. Finally, some words of wisdom from Gippsland farmer Len Richards, who was knocked unconscious by a falling tree branch during a storm. Lulu, an eastern grey kangaroo he had raised as a joey and released on his farm, ''stood over me, with her big hind legs at my back, 'barking' like a dog for help''. His wife noticed Lulu's odd behaviour, called an ambulance and Richards was airlifted to a Melbourne hospital. Lulu saved his life. It's a much-recounted story that made headlines around the world and earned Lulu an RSPCA National Animal Valour Award - the first native animal in the world to receive such an honour. ''Kangaroos are the true spirit of Australia and the land belongs to them, but they are being decimated with nowhere to go,'' Richards wrote in a recently published anthology on kangaroo conservation. ''As sub-divisions for more housing and human population increases, and more agricultural land is taken for farming and grazing of stock, our beautiful native animals are trapped in smaller and smaller fragmented pockets of suburban sprawl. This has put them under enormous pressure and they are struggling to survive, especially with the drought over the last number of years. ''A great change in the Australian attitude is essential if we are to save their dwindling populations. If we don't act soon to rectify the terrible wrongs against them, then one day we may wake up to find our kangaroos have gone forever.'' Canberra Times, Rosslyn Beeby is Science and Environment Reporter.
*************************************** We must be very grateful indeed that the cowardly vacillation shown throughout the current kangaroo management crisis by the Defence Department upper echelons is not a characteristic of the men and women who we rely on to defend us or represent us in overseas peace missions. Their pusillanimous refusal to take essential action is inexcusable given the quantity and quality of ecological advice available to them from professional ecologists who understand kangaroos and grassland ecosystems. They cannot claim ignorance as justification for their disingenuously pious claim to be seeking non-lethal options. These options refer to just one species among dozens of threatened grassland species; it just happens that eastern grey kangaroos are the most conspicuous and cuddly of them and are being given total precedence, solely for public relations reasons. Offering feed to the roos simply allows the numbers to remain artificially high to perpetuate an existing environmental catastrophe. The grasslands and woodlands are to Canberra what the rainforests are to Cairns. The idea of clear-felling the Cairns rainforests is inconceivable. Yet the grasslands are being clear- felled by kangaroo mismanagement. Already nationally endangered species are daily moving closer to extinction and the upper Defence brass continues to find ways to avoid its responsibilities.Its strategy will work though, to the extent it needs it to. Very soon the grasslands and their inhabitants will have gone and so will Defence's public relations problem. *Letter to the Canberra Times. author unknown. ******************************************** Authorities are at a loss about how to reduce the number of kangaroos invading a residential area in Mudgee's south, in central western New South Wales. The Mid-Western Regional Council, police and National Parks and Wildlife Service have met to consider what to do about the hundreds of kangaroos that have entered the Bellevue Estate. Council general manager Warwick Bennett says there are barriers to culling or removing the animals. "One you're in a public ... residential area and there's no discharging of firearms, secondly trying to relocate the kangaroos will put too much stress on them and they could die of heart attack, so we're a bit bereft of ideas I suppose in terms of what our next step is," he said. *ABC *************************************** KANGAROOS in Heathcote have reached plague proportions and urgent action must be taken, a local paramedic claimed yesterday. Danny Lumby, who has lived in the area for more than 20 years, said kangaroos had become so sociable they no longer lived in the bush, but had now taken to staying near residents' homes. Mr Lumby said the problem had escalated so far, he would often see at least 40 kangaroos at the side of his house, around the clock. "We are looking down the barrel of a very serious problem," he said. "They don't move. There are kangaroos grazing everywhere. "I've had kangaroos up to my front door at night, up against my bedroom windows; eating grass and staring through." Mr Lumby said he had been called to the scene of several car accidents caused by kangaroos in the course of his work. He said kangaroos had been hit by cars in Heathcote's main street and at the side of the local police station. "The kangaroos should have moved back to the bush, but they haven't," Mr Lumby said. He said despite kangaroos' status as part of the Australian landscape and a national fauna symbol, it was time for a mass, but humane, cull. "There are far too many, they are protective of their territory and they grunt at the kids." Victoria's Department of Sustainability and Environment has strict guidelines about how to handle kangaroos. The rules forbid harming kangaroos in any way, but DSE can issue licenses to cull animals if they are overabundant. "Applications are considered on a case by case basis, in an attempt to strike a balance between providing for wildlife and landholders' ability to work their land efficiently and productively," the rules state. *Bendigo Advertiser ******************************************* A CANBERRA man went on a kangaroo shooting rampage inside a national park, leaving some animals to die slow and painful deaths, police and parks officials say. Police have charged the man with illegally killing more than 20 kangaroos in the Namadgi National Park near Canberra. The man, 30, is alleged to have shot the kangaroos over a three-month period from November 2006. Police have seized the rifle allegedly used in the killings and will claim the man killed 18 kangaroos and left another two alive but so badly injured they had to be put down by rangers. Ballistics specialists are analysing the bullets and the weapon. ACT's parks director Russell Watkinson declared the killings "abhorrent". "Some of the kangaroos were shot in the hip or the tail and left to die a slow and painful death – it was a cruel and senseless act," Mr Watkinson said. "In addition, the shootings took place in a national park which is open to the public, potentially creating a very dangerous situation. "I am very pleased with the investigative results which highlight the excellent working relationship established between ACT Policing and park rangers." ACT Policing's rural patrol senior constable Brian McAlonan said police and rangers were working closely to combat rural crime. "Offences such as killing native animals carry a maximum penalty of one year imprisonment and are taken very seriously by both police and the rangers who patrol the national parks day and night," Const McAlonan said. The alleged offender will face court on August 10, charged with killing a native animal, discharging a firearm in a public place and failure to keep his firearm registration up to date. *News.com ******************************************** FOUR teenagers from Goulburn have been charged with the mutilation murder of three kangaroos at Murramarang National Park. The kangaroos' corpses were found by National Parks and Wildlife Services officers at the park, north of Batemans Bay, on June 10. Police believe they have recovered the murder weapon, an axe, found at a South Durras property earlier this week. The teenagers, all 17, were charged with harming protected fauna and are due to appear at Batemans Bay Children's Court in August. *Illawarra Mercury ********************************************* A MILL Park mother who crashed into a kangaroo as she drove her daughter to school says she still feels uneasy on the roads. Nicole Mardegan said she was traumatised after a roo jumped ``out of nowhere'' in front of her car on Williamsons Rd, South Morang, in May. She has called for action to protect motorists from the constant threat of hitting the animals. ``The kangaroo was not only hit, but then lodged underneath the vehicle,'' Ms Mardegan said of the animal, later put down. ``It was still alive and thrashing around. It was so big, its tail was sticking out of my daughter's side of the car and its feet were on the other side.'' She said the animals should be relocated. But Whittlesea Council sustainability planning manager John Rawlings said there would always be wildlife in the 70 per cent rural municipality and urged motorists to take care. ``The particularly high risk periods for kangaroos are at dusk and dawn, when bright vehicle headlights dazzle and confuse the animals which may aimlessly bound into the path of traffic,'' he said. ``(Kangaroos) can be expected to roam into urban areas including Eden Park, Mill Park, South Morang and Whittlesea township, and at times can venture much further south.'' Local wildlife rescuers have recorded increasing numbers of road accidents involving kangaroos as development pushes into their habitat. Last week, the Leader reported that Wildlife Victoria rescuers were outraged three kangaroos were killed on local roads after apparently being spooked by fireworks. ``Let me tell you about outrage being without a car for three weeks . . . and having to pay a $500 excess for an accident that was not your fault,'' Ms Mardegan said. Mr Rawlings said VicRoads was installing more kangaroo warning signs in Mill Park and South Morang, particularly along Plenty and McDonalds roads. *Leader ********************************************** A PROJECT to move a mob of 50 kangaroos caught in a Mill Park development zone has flopped because the animals keep coming back. Whittlesea Council sustainability planning manager John Rawlings said the project had been wound up after four months, but kangaroos remained in the area. ``A recent effort to try and relocate kangaroos from the Plenty Valley Town Centre area of Mill Park was not entirely successful,'' Mr Rawlings said. ``Some of (the kangaroos) kept returning or were being replaced by others coming into the area.'' The eastern grey kangaroos had been getting caught in back yards and fences as well as creating traffic hazards. They were to be tranquilised and moved to Quarry Hills, north of South Morang, by State Government authorities as requested by the council. In January, the Leader reported wildlife protection campaigners were warning that the relocation wouldn't work. ``Kangaroos are wild animals that cannot be herded out of an area like domestic cattle or sheep,'' Australian Wildlife Protection Council vice-president Vivienne Ortega said at the time. ``The only real solution . . . is the creation of continuous and connected corridors for wildlife, linking them up to National Parks.'' Mr Rawlings said there were now less kangaroos in the area because some had been successfully moved further north. *Whittlesea Post **********************************************
BOOK REVIEW 'Chasing Kangaroos' by Tim Flannery An Australian scientist describes his career-long case of ''roo fever.' By Donna Seaman, Donna Seaman is an associate editor for Booklist and host of the Chicago radio program "Open Books" (openbooksradio.org). Seaman's writer interviews are collected in "Writers on the Air."
HAS the controversial author of "The Weather Makers," a hard-hitting international bestseller about global warming, turned away from stark findings to dash off a merry travelogue about his pursuit of those cute and funny Down-Under critters with the storybook name of kangaroo? Has mammalogist Tim Flannery decided to rest on his laurels? Not a chance. Flannery is a scientist of conscience and a man on a mission. But in this candid, dry, witty blend of memoir and science, he does take a more covert approach to our bewildering predicament as the species responsible for causing potentially drastic climate change. Readers still encounter his ongoing amazement at the interconnectivity of life, along with his unabashed delight in the kangaroo, the unlikeliest of creatures. Flannery's tale begins when he was an indifferent student and a "rebellious young man" angered by the human assault against nature that prevented him from encountering such extraordinary animals as the Tasmanian tiger (the last one died "nineteen years, three months, and three weeks" before he was born). Fortunately, he finds recompense in Melbourne's Museum of Victoria, working as a volunteer assistant to the American paleontologist Tom Rich. There Flannery becomes intrigued with the sketchy yet alluring fossil record that hints at the marvels of 10 million years of kangaroo evolution, and his life's course is set. In the grip of " 'roo fever" (a condition that has never abated), Flannery fires up his old Moto Guzzi and hits the road in search of Australia's many-splendored kangaroos. Episodes both amusing and sobering from his 1975 motorcycle odyssey lead to accounts of somewhat more orderly research expeditions, each a needle-in-the-haystack endeavor. And beneath it all runs a bass line of mordant irony. Although kangaroos, which Flannery dubs "the most remarkable animals that ever lived," are enshrined as Australia's national animal, they are nonetheless slaughtered by the millions and fed to dogs. At present 70-odd related species such as kangaroos, wallabies, tree kangaroos and rat kangaroos live in places as divergent as deserts and rain forests. Great gaps in knowledge about their evolution persist in spite of Flannery's own considerable achievements in discovering and naming previously unrecognized kangaroo species. Flannery now creates a veritable kangaroo family album, portraying enormous prehistoric kangaroos tantalizingly suggested by painstakingly recovered fossils; "stinkers," now-extinct male grey kangaroos that were said to "reek of curry"; "cat-sized" quokkas with their "trusting faces and short tails"; the brindled nailtail; the tammar, which can drink seawater; the bugaree, whose fur is "a delicious licorice colour, tipped with silver," and the tiny yet "brave and dogged" oolacunta. So complex in structure is the kangaroo family tree that Flannery describes it as a "great twiggy bush." The book's human portraits are no less diverse and offer telling glimpses into Australian society. Flannery is shocked when the renowned dinosaur expert Alan Charig searches for fossils not in the wilds of Queensland but, rather, in the region's pubs. Cattle-men, Charig explains, "come across plenty of fossils which they occasionally bring into their pub to show their friends." Years later, Flannery, then director of the South Australian Museum in Adelaide, visits Coober Pedy, Australia's leading opal-mining town, hoping to score some opalized fossils, which are rare, beautiful and extremely valuable. Sure enough, an elderly miner brings him a specimen, a tiny speck floating in a vial of water. "It's an opalized worm jaw," he tells Flannery, "and the last time I showed it to anyone they offered me five thousand dollars for it. How much will the museum pay?" Flannery's low-key delivery is perfect in many passages but feels muffled and patchy in others. For all of the book's arresting information, provocative analysis and entertaining anecdotes, there are gaps in the coverage, and as a whole it feels hastily constructed. In his explanation of Dr. Terrence Dawson's methods for determining "how and why kangaroos hop," for instance, Flannery writes, "His main tools were a treadmill, a few red kangaroos which had been brought to Boston and trained to hop on it." The mind reels. How does one persuade kangaroos to hop on a treadmill? Nowhere does Flannery discuss kangaroo intelligence, temperament or interaction with humans. The reader longing to learn about the role of the kangaroo in Aboriginal life has to wait until nearly the last chapter. It's as though Flannery had modeled his narrative on his exhaustive desert quests for mammal fossils: One must traverse exhausting stretches of flat, gritty terrain under a blazing sun in the hope of claiming the smallest of treasures. But the reward is worth the effort. When Flannery, as bold an environmental historian as he is a discerning paleontologist and mammalogist, widens the lens to encompass the human element, his narrative deepens in implication and resonance. His great strength as a theorist lies in his recognition of the significance of our species' influence right from the start on nature. So when ancient wallaby bones are found on the Indonesian island of Halmahera, Flannery investigates and concludes that approximately 8,500 years ago migrant Aboriginal people transported forest wallabies by sea (apparently some in the kangaroo family can tolerate rafts as well as treadmills), perhaps to "enrich the game" in the same way conquering Europeans brought animals to their new worlds. He believes the Aborigines' "achievement is thus a signal landmark on the road toward human domination of the globe." And speaking of the impact of introduced animals, Flannery makes another great leap and postulates that the arrival of man's best friend in Australia around 5,000 years ago precipitated nothing less than a "dingo-driven revolution" that resulted in "a profound restructuring of Australia's ecosystems and human cultures." The apogee of Flannery's kangaroo chronicles are his conversations with Aborigine elders, virtual walking natural history encyclopedias, from whom he gleans insights into 46,000 years of Aboriginal land management. "The Aborigines' traditional lifestyles had been the lifeblood of the country…. In effect, the very act of living on the land — of hunting, gathering and burning — had maintained its diversity." The same can be said of traditional sustainable ways of life all around the world, most of which, like that of the Aborigines, have been forcibly eradicated and replaced with the industrialized practices that have brought about today's loss of habitat, accelerated extinctions, pollution and global warming. Flannery does offer firsthand reports on conservation efforts on behalf of endangered kangaroos, but he also presents evidence that kangaroos, like polar bears, are already suffering dire effects of rising temperatures. No species stands alone. Life on Earth is a grand, intricately choreographed balancing act, easily knocked off kilter, and the tipping point may be near. Flannery asserts, "We must be willing to face the difficult decisions that are inherent in our role as the most powerful force in the environment." But will we take seriously the warnings and calls to action so carefully crafted by Flannery and other cogent and ethical scientists? As a species, are we adaptive enough to change our ways, in concert? Certainly nature, in which we are intrinsically meshed, is rife with miracles. • CalenderLive.com ********************************* Recorded in 2006 & 2007 - Recorded in 2006 & 2007 - The shameful case of the Somerton Kangaroos, boxed in by industrial estates and their daily worsening fate callously ignored by officials and ordinary people all around them - but for the perseverence of wildlife activists - highlights the hopeless inadequacy of laws to nurture and protect biodiversity and wildlife in Victoria and Australia. It also exposes the severe disconnection with reality and responsible values of the developers and politicians who force "Melbourne 2030 'planning'" on Victoria with its completely unjustified aim to impose another million people on this the most cleared state of Australia. The Premier of Victoria, the Minister for Environment and the Minister for Planning are held responsible. (more) (less) **************************************** Kangaroo videos on U-Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmbOKOMkdts 4. Lay Reports on Kangaroo numbers 03:19 If you cannot trust the government's statistics on kangaroos, how do you estimate numbers? The outlook seems dismal if we do not.....
3. Kangaroo industry history & official story Why we should be concerned about the viability of kangaroo-meat industry Unreliable & secretive government statistics Tags: kangaroos statistics history-kangaroo-commerce Raw File: 3. Kanga industry hist & official story v2.wmv 2. Kangaroo Meatworks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmbOKOMkdts Kangaroo Meatworks 02:17 2nd interview of 10 with Pat O'Brien about fears that Australan Kangaroo population will crash. Pat O'Brien, President of Wildlife 2nd interview of 10 with Pat O'Brien about fears that Australan Kangaroo population will crash. Pat O'Brien, President of Wildlife Protection Association of Australia. 1. Kangaroo vs Man 01:39 First basic cut of 12 short videos of interview with Pat O'Brien, President of Wildlife Protection Association of Asutralia INc., about fears that kangaroo populations may go into freefall due to multiple threats, including overhunting and government neglect. ************************************ Archives can be found at www.kangaroo-protection-coalition.com or www.kangaroosforever.com
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