Kangaroos Unsafe in the Outback!
Australia’s own wildlife is killed in record numbers! The kangaroo is the most famous symbol of the “land down under,” but Australia is not doing its part to protect its greatest animal celebrity. Kangaroos have become a mere commodity; Australia exports 3 million of their skins each year to be made into Adidas soccer shoes, golf gloves and other sporting goods marked as “K leather.” Their meat is marketed as a gourmet delicacy, but it is realistically most often made into pet food, activists have revealed. Their claws are even sometimes made into grotesque back-scratchers. Viewed by the country’s government as a “renewable resource,” kangaroos are offered virtually no protection under Australian law. A death quota in the millions is set for them each year; six species are indeed already extinct. Others – particularly the red kangaroo – are declining rapidly. The marsupial many local farmers unfairly deem a “pest” faces unthinkable brutality. In addition to the fact that these animals are inhumanely killed and furtively tracked in the immense outback, their young are often pointless casualties, the Vegetarians International Voice for Animals (VIVA) has reported.
Above, a tiny joey peers from her shot dead mothers pouch! Whenever a female kangaroo is killed, her joeys are murdered or abandoned – even Australia’s “Code of Practice for the Humane Shooting of Kangaroos” dictates, “Decapitation with a sharp instrument in very small hairless young or properly executed heavy blow to destroy the brain in larger young are effective means of causing sudden and painless death.” These means may be efficient, but they are cruel and completely unnecessary – neither kangaroos nor their young should be massacred in the first place. But this is not the only way hunters disrupt the structure of the animals’ society. They often kill the fittest males, leaving female kangaroos less options for mating. The result is a weakened gene pool and a generally younger, smaller species; the average age of a red kangaroo, for example, is 2-years-old, whereas less than half a century ago it was 12, VIVA noted.
The government has convinced the Australian people that kangaroo herds are in “plague proportions,” but their current population of about 50 million is an essential part of the county’s environment. Like many animal species before it, the kangaroos’ numbers have made it a target for killing in the past – recall the story of the passenger pigeon if you believe these animals are not worth protecting.
"Sporting shooters" shot this little kangaroo, then hung her body on a post. “In a recent survey of overseas visitors, one quarter of people surveyed didn’t see the wild kangaroos they wanted to,” commented Pat O’Brien, president of the Wildlife Protection Association of Australia. Kangaroos already have to deal with the stress of the droughts and wildfires in their country, and yet an additional twenty percent of the population is killed by hunters each year, according to the Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC).
Many are merely injured by bad shots, then left to die in agony by irresponsible people who do not care about the animals’ welfare. Australia is sending a very mixed message by continuing to promote the kangaroo as an emblem of its country, yet permitting – and even encouraging – shockingly inhumane treatment of this animal. Wildlife should be left to live in its natural habitat; it should not be slaughtered for a small profit, though convincing proponents of kangaroo culling is difficult. “Adidas is he biggest threat to kangas, and they refuse to listen to any arguments against using the skins – because they are cheap,” O’Brien said. Wildlife groups hope to open up everybodies eyes to the profit-driven suffering of this species. Please contact us to learn where to find out more information about kangaroos. To help this cause, write to Australian Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell at Parliament House, Canberra, ACT 2600 – Be sure to let him know the killing of kangaroos and the trade of their skins and meat will not be tolerated! 1/3/06
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