All about Kangaroo Drives!Kangaroo Drive Driven by the motorbikes, the hundreds and hundreds of kangaroos came bounding into the corner of the paddock, and the guns on either side opened up. When the kangaroos found they could go no further, some tried to get through the barbed wire fence, tangling themselves up, others doubled back, trying to jump over the ones still hurtling towards what they thought was escape. The shooters fired repeatedly with shotguns loaded with BB’s into the mass of moving kangaroos. BB’s pack a powerful punch, but have a short range, so the shooters on the other side of the triangular corner of the paddock wouldn’t get shot. Kangaroos were writhing, wounded and crippled on the ground, big ones and small ones, blood was everywhere. As the kangaroos stopped coming into the corner, (the remainder doubled back away from the motorbikes), the shooters jumped in with waddys, and killed any that had any chance of getting away. The crippled ones were just left to die. Hundreds and hundreds of them. I asked what they did with the carcasses, and was told sometimes they bury them with a bulldozer, but mostly they left them there and threw poison baits around the perimeter of the carcasses to kill any dingoes that were attracted the smell. This was a kangaroo drive I witnessed in central NSW in the early 1970’s. I was invited by a shooter to attend and to see how the kangaroos were killed. It was the most horrific thing I have ever seen, and I became a wildlife activist after seeing this. At that time, the roo drives were regularly held in the remoter areas of Australia where grain crops were being grown. Often they were held every weekend, and ‘sporting’ shooters would be invited out to the shoot. The landowner generally supplied the cartridges, and the beer afterwards A 2002 Federal Government report prepared by the RSPCA stated that roo drives were still occurring in some areas of Australia where roos were causing crop damage. Western residents also tell us that many farmers destock their properties temporarily, then poison the water troughs with urea. It takes a couple of days for the kangaroos to die. This practice is also mentioned in the above report. During the 70’s to early 80’s I recall many times taking visitors (some from overseas) to a particular spot, where it was possible to look down at the side of hill, just before dusk, and watch countless thousands of kangaroos loping down into the grain paddocks. There’s no doubt at that time there were many millions of kangaroos in and around the grain fields, but those big mobs have now gone forever, and I don’t believe they will ever come back. Current numbers are just too low. Many emus were shot as well. Emus danced and flapped around in grain paddocks, and flattened huge areas of grain. Emus were hated, and targeted even more than kangaroos, but they couldn’t have emu drives, because the emus could outrun the motorbikes, and easily jump over the fences and get away. Often they were shot from a distance with rifles. While I was in that area of NSW, I helped to set up a network of wildlife carers who would retrieve joeys from road kills, nurture them, and release them in a protected area. Of course there were not many protected areas, and if a released kangaroo strayed out of that area it would be shot. Some carers put a cattle tag in the kangaroo’s ear before it was released. Many shooters wouldn’t shoot kangaroo with an ear tag, because they knew it was hand raised. Of course, many other shooters shot anything that hopped, flew, ran, or crawled. This is the price we Australians impose on our wildlife, so we can eat a piece of toast for breakfast. 9/9/05 Pat O’Brien, President Wildlife Protection Association of Australia Inc.
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