Manipulating the kangaroo Science and Research!

Kangaroo science and research has no morality. How can it have? Science conflicts and distorts. It can by used and manipulated. It can reach any desired conclusion, depending on the data collected, and the morality of those who apply it. It can also be manipulated for financial gain.

When it comes to the kangaroo kill, some of those practicing science have been accused of being part of a cabal of opportunistic scientific Mafia, prostituting their education and scientific skills in the pursuit of funding at any cost.

Professor Gordon Grigg, accused by many of being the Godfather of the Academic Mafia, has for many years been pursuing his sheep replacement therapy. This theory supposes and promotes the idea that sheep can be replaced by kangaroos in the rangelands.

The theory behind this foolish assumption fails to consider, or ignores, where our billion dollar wool clip will come from. This fanciful theory also does not take into consideration that our overseas meat markets demand beef and mutton, not kangaroo meat.

Nor does this theory recognise that perhaps we shouldn’t be trying to farm in some of those areas anyway. Kangaroos become the scapegoats when overgrazing, and drought after drought, year after year, turned the land to dust.

Kangaroos are now fugitives in their own land, where before European settlement they have lived in harmony with their environment for millions of years.

That other icon of vested interest the CSIRO, also becomes involved in the pursuit of funding at any cost to our wildlife. The CSIRO is partly funded by Industry.

The Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia (KIAA) is a member of the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC), another unaccountable Federal government quango that has a long history of encouraging and financing Industry development at any cost.

During the push by sand miners Pivot Mines in the early 1990’s to access the Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area, the RIRDC actually manipulated data to show that the fishing Industry did not have any significant economic benefit from that area, when in fact the opposite was the case.

RIRDC also has recently produced another dodgy research paper that claims that trophy hunting would bring financial benefits to farmers and indigenous peoples.

The document also claimed governments could use funds generated by trophy hunting to achieve conservation goals, but fails to say how, and that “public opposition to trophy hunting may have been influenced by anecdotal reports that some in the Industry operated unethically!”

In fact the research they did, if they did any, was manipulated to show a desired result. This happens far more often than most people realise.

The RIRDC provides funding to the CSIRO for their Rural and Development programs. One CSIRO scientist, South African Dr Fraudenberger, is very outspoken and actively promotes the culling of kangaroos.

We wonder, does Dr Fraudenberger represent the CSIRO or the KIAA or both?

Fraudenberger has represented the CSIRO at various forums such as the ACT Kangaroo Management Committee and in the Senate on the same subject. He attempted to gain a seat on the NSW kangaroo Management Advisory Committee in the 90’s, but was rejected as being biased.

Can Fraudenberger be an 'independent' expert on behalf of the CSIRO? One must ask what type of deals are struck between the CSIRO, the KIAA and the RIRDC that are likely to influence the way the CSIRO approaches these issues?

In an article written by Fraudenberger in the Issues Magazine, he claimed there was no difference between a kangaroo and a grain of wheat.

It should concern all of us that the CSIRO presents to the public as an independent body, and is invited to participate in various forums on that basis.

However, due to obvious self interests – it would appear that there is not sufficient independence in their representatives, nor is there anyone to protect the interests of our wildlife in the Parliament. Where is the morality here?

It appears that almost any scientist who is paid by these vested interest quangos will produce any material that can justify the continued killing of kangaroos.

In the 2001 AAT Appeal against the 2001 NSW Kangaroo Management Plan, Environment Australia funded the appearance of two genetic scientists to give evidence that decades of shooting the largest kangaroos would have no effect on the genetic strength of the kangaroo populations.

They gave a bewildering display of graphs, power point presentations, and discourses that managed to convince the Appeal Members that there was no evidence that loss of genetic strength was caused by the kangaroo kill.

We pointed out that there was no evidence it was not caused by the commercial kill, either.

The National Kangaroo Protection Coalition, who instigated the Appeal, could not compete with this flood of pseudo-scientific argument, the Appeal was lost, and our kangaroos continue to be brutalised and unsustainably killed.

However as most Australians, including farmers and schoolchildren know, sustained and continued killing of the largest of any species, bypasses the natural selection process, and often spells doom for that species.

We humans have done that before, many times, with many species worldwide. Here was another case of science being manipulated to show a pre-conceived result.

Then there is the counting of kangaroos. Every year the methodology of population counting is changed, as are most of the staff doing the counting. An aeroplane flies in straight line over a stretch of Australia, and the kangaroos visible from the aircraft are counted.

Variable and changeable correction factors are added to estimate the number of kangaroos likely to there in that area, but not sighted from the aircraft.

The figures are the fed into a computer to a complicated modeling system that then attempts to tell us how many kangaroos we have left.

The counting system has been criticised for decades by wildlife groups, but how the actual modeling works, is privileged information and not available to groups to independently assess. They also count the kangaroos in National Parks to boost the figures.

Currently in charge of the counting is wildlife ecologist Dr Tony Pople, a former student of Prof. Gordon Grigg. Both are based at the Queensland University.

Dr Pople was recently flown to California to give evidence to a Senate Committee who were hearing evidence into a proposed Senate Bill to change the Legislation to allow the sale of wildlife body parts in California.

Who paid for Pople to go to the US and defend the commercial kangaroo kill? The Industry? Not likely! Did we pay again? Almost certainly! *

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