SAVE THE KANGAROO
A Conversation with Lindy Stacker

By Claudette Vaughan

Lindy Stacker is a spokesperson for the Australians Against Commercialisation of Wildlife.

Abolitionist: How can we save the kangaroo from the likes of people such as John Kelly, the president of the Kangaroo Industry in Australia, from farmers, from kangaroo meat eaters and skin wearers and from a mostly indifferent public?

Lindy Stacker: This is a vexed and complicated issue and it's one that animal activists have been working on for well over 30 years. It's a very difficult issue because first off you come from the space of trying to educate people about it so it's necessary to go through the processes of being laughed at, ignored, then taken seriously. Then you become attacked and then you know that you are somewhere close to winning and I think even though we are unfortunately not close to winning we are at the stage where people of the government and industry do take us seriously frequently enough to be attacking us.

It's really an issue of educating the public not to buy kangaroo meat for a start. What's important is to become informed members of the general public and to write to government representatives and to say, “Look. We know what's going on”. To do that with clout it is better achieved through the various environmental or animal advocacy groups.

In 2003 kangaroo figures were down 50-75% so at the end of that year we asked Bob Dubus's government to stop the commercial killing of the kangaroo. From that time things have even gotten worse. The problem is you don't read about this in the media.

If you look back at 1988 kangaroo populations were believed to be around 5 ½ million then because when the drought broke the numbers started to go up. In 1993 kangaroo populations were estimated at 14 million. Then they went yearly from 11 million, 12 million, 9 million, 13 million. The figures for 2004 dropped to 6 ½ million. For the Year 2005 the figures were 5 ½ million. So in the space of 14 years we've seen a drop of 13 million kangaroos estimated down to 5 ½ million.

Senator Andrew Bartlett wearing one of the "Save The Kangaroo" t-shirts

This is correlated to market demands. It has nothing to do with wildlife conservation in any sense of the word or environmental sustainability. Infact “sustainability” is a magic word that nobody seems to know what it means precisely. Scientists might want to quantify it but the fact is there is lots of use of the word but not much sustainability happening. Money and profit, when talking about the kangaroo, always have won out. If you go back to the early 70's the quotas then were around 200,000. Now we are always looking at over 1 million and this is because the industry is insatiable and it needs x amount of skins and x amount of kilos to sell every year. This Industry isn't happy to sell the same amount as it did the year before. They want constant product on the rise and rise.

Abolitionist: Many Australians view the kangaroo as nothing more than a pest because of propaganda. Is it possible to legislate against the kangaroo being considered a free resource for the industry?

LS: The commercial industry says it makes over 200 million dollars but in tourism you are potentially looking at making millions of dollars that everyone can benefit from not just the kangaroo industry cartels which are only 4 – 6 companies maximum.

Abolitionist: In the new kangaroo book “Kangaroos Myths and Realities” you centred your argument around the question: Is it possible to construct a model for the non-destructive utilisation of Australian wildlife. Can you talk about that please?

LS: The problem is I was on the State Kangaroo Review Committee for over 15 years to advise the Minister. What we tried to do was implement these sorts of things like asking the question: What is the value in pure tourist dollars? Here we were talking about utilizing marginal land that is no longer productive because of human pressure not wildlife pressure.

We don't have a wildlife problem, we have a people problem. We have to start talking about the non-consumptive uses of wildlife. This Kangaroo Review Committee wouldn't even let us introduce that concept in. We tried and we argued and we fought and they flat out said no . They were only there to talk about the commercial industry.

Ex-kangaroo shooter, David Supports "Save the Kangaroo"

Why is it the Industry has more power and influence with government than the community or NGO or non-profit groups representing Australian citizens? If you belong to the kangaroo industry you are subsidized with a truck and a gun that you can claim back on your tax return. All this from decimating wildlife that should rightfully belong to all Australian citizens. Government committees talk to their own mindsets so often that they may look shocked and dismayed for a few short moments but their come back is they have an industry to control and manage the kangaroo populations. The thing that controls kangaroo populations in reality is rainfall.

There are jobs involved up and around the commercial industry and that's the problem. You have an industry that's been allowed to exist but in legislation it does not have a prima facie right to exist. This is the reason why several animal advocate organizations have taken National Parks and Wildlife to court. 1 ½ times we have won. Recently we just lost a case in 2003. It's a difficult argument. What they have done and what they did in the 2001-2 is change the management program. They introduced ‘Renewable Resources' to the policy and into the program. Now it is very difficult to argue what we were trying to argue. All of these policy changes were done behind closed doors and unless you are very involved hardly anybody knows about that. E.g., if you take them to court to kick their behinds they could say, “Well we have a Renewable Resource Program now. It's not related to litigation”. It's true but what we were saying is it's not sustainable. What happens, for example, when you shoot over the quota which just happened 2 years ago? Not only NSW did it, but Queensland did as well as WA.

That information was kept hidden and what do you think happened? Nothing. Nothing happened! So the industry is running out of Roos and how we can prove is by what they pressured to get four years ago. They got the Southeast area opened up for commercial shooting. This was a first and was only ever opened before to farmers who had a 1 to 1 license.

Abolitionist: Is it possible to make the Kangaroo Industry separate from the demands of the farmers? LS: That would mean having a lot of political power. It doesn't matter what issue it is whether it's climate change, forests or the kangaroo, industry and profit have the power and for a tragic reason they have the governments ear. Abolitionist: Will we ever see a policy from the Greens that will keep animal activists satisfied as the Greens have a comprehensive and enlightened animal policy yet on the issue of the kangaroo they still side with government and are pro- culling of kangaroos. LS: We have argued this with them before and Bob Brown says no they don't but Bob said some people do support the culling and some people don't support it.

Film Critic Peter Thompson wears a "Save the Kangaroo" T-Shirt

As is typical of all political parties there is a wide range of opinions on the matter.

What we saw all over the lower Darling last year was populations in 1993 were over 1 million. Last year they were 100,000. This is a 90% drop and this is inevitable when Industry is involved. Many people in the Greens know that. Some of them argue we can farm kangaroos but you can't because you would run out of kangaroos very, very quickly.

Just on the pure mathematics alone, if you were do your sums and you look at 15% of the kangaroo population (2 ½ million animals) if you work out each kangaroo would yield just under 7 kilo per animal it's just not sustainable for an industry. Kangaroos are very slow to grow and they are mostly muscle. Australians eat 50 tonnes of animal flesh a year so you'd have to wipe out the population something like 556 times over if you were feeding them Kangaroo flesh.

Abolitionist: You have been in contact with the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) asking them not to approve the commercialization of kangaroos. Is that correct?

LS: Hope springs eternal but there has been a minor push to get wildlife utilization adopted within their policy. There is great, great debate about this and plenty of arguments against that. All environmentalists know what happens when you put profits up against environmental considerations. You know which one loses so there is a debate about that. The Australian Conservation Foundation has always been against wildlife utilization but now some people are trying to implement it. We have heard this push has come from the Northern Territory who have said why can't we crocodile farm in Australia? What we are doing and so should everybody else who's concerned is write to Ian Lowe the director of ACF. Hopefully he and others will knock this idea on the head. Wildlife needs all the friends it can get and to be doing this, since so many amazing people have been a part of the ACF like Dr Rawston, we definitely need to band together and fight this. The kangaroo and many wildlife species are misunderstood and much maligned. The most difficult thing is to get the truth out there.

Abolitionist: It's a myth that “kangaroos are all alike” and that they are too numerous for their own good as is used to justify the killing quota figures, do you think that the Australian public have been seduced by the idea that the kangaroo is over abundant in their numbers, out of control and in plague proportions?

LS: We Australians have been indoctrinated since the time we could walk and it happens in every country. It happens to the Japanese and whaling. It happens to elephants in Africa as everyone is told it's better to commercially hunt “just a little bit”. And they use that maximum sustained figure which nobody knows what it is. Same with the Canadians and harp seals. The only way you ever got any public attention onto those issues was to fight it externally. Unfortunately in Alaska they are still massacring wolves as we speak. The truth is kangaroos have been here for over 50million years. Who do you think is going to last the longest? It might be better for all wildlife species that the human species disappeared. Wildlife species do very well if left alone but they are not designed to cope with an industry that wants to destroy them. The cream that they ever get off their population in good times is needed for droughts and floods etc. It wasn't put there for the likes of John Kelly. The Australian public will have to stand up and say no . It isn't yours. It isn't a commodity. It's ours and it's something we cherish . 

We were already out-voted 8 to 3 and of course the Chairman has the casting vote so we were already greatly out-voted by the farmers, industry and the land protection board – you name it. Every government department under the sun!

Okay so it was going to be a whole new committee but it isn't really. Even though technically we were given 2 positions we had infact 4 people so our positions were reduced by 50%. The committee was already so difficult to work on with all the vested interests and so few of us that this new idea of theirs wasn't workable. Why is this and where did this push come from?

You never get any answers to that. Sadly the sound of common sense did not prevail so technically yes there were 2 positions up. The Humane Society said I could be their representative as I have worked on the issue for so long.

After long and arduous discussions we decided not to go back which is what they were hoping for. It wasn't what we considered to be fair or democratic. Totally unworkable in fact.

Abolitionist: What's your view on John Kelly?

LS: I'd have to take sedation pills (laughter) to get started on that. Mr Kelly obviously sees wildlife purely as a commodity. I don't know how some people can sleep at night but he does not care about the animals he is killing. We have seen the expose that Animal Liberation NSW did when they secretly managed to get into one of Kelly's processing plants. He took out litigation and lost in the end. These people, if they are proud of what they do, why not show it to the public?

Abolitionist: Actually John Kelly has done a big favour to the kangaroo as this court case set a precedent on what can be “in the public interest” is legal even if one trespasses on private property to get the footage. So the face of animal activism in Australia today has been helped by John Kelly for prosecuting animal activists in the first place. (laughter)

LS: Very unobligingly, I'm sure. For the first time these issues were debated and if we learn from history what is “in the public interest” here? Ask ourselves: What is better for everybody including the species involved? Why do we have to see everything in dollar terms?