THE KANGAROO INDUSTRY INTERVIEW

by Claudette Vaughan
 
Q.   First of all, when was the Kangaroo Industry first formed John?

John Kelly: I guess you could say 40,000 years ago.   Human beings have been utilising kangaroos in Australia ever since they have settled here.  This probably makes it one of the animals with the longest record of sustainable utilisation there is on the face of the planet but in a modern-day commercial sense it was in the early 1960’s that we started exporting kangaroo meat to Europe for human consumption.

A century or two before, we had been exporting kangaroo skins all over the world.In a modern-day sense it’s been since the early 80’s we started aggressively marketing kangaroo skins and meat for the overseas market and have put in place the government regularly system that we have now to ensure the harvest is sustainable.

Q. What were the skins used for back in the 60’s?

A.  What they always have been. Principally for 1st class sporting shoes and dress shoes.  Kangaroo leather has a unique finer structure amongst all other skins from other animals.   Kangaroo skin is arranged in parallel fashion and this has much greater contact between each fiber, which means you can reduce the leather to a much finer substance and thickness.

Q. What about the meat itself?  It is used for both human and nonhuman consumption.  Is that correct?

A. Principally overseas for human consumption and domestically for pet-food.

Q.  How much is being exported overseas?

A.  About half of the yearly harvest is taken for human consumption and about 80% of that product is exported.

Q. Are you of the opinion, as Professor Archer is, agreeing with the dictum: “Use it or Lose it?”

A. The “Use it or Lose it” view is based on making available a wild resource to try and ensure that we are protected.  It’s taking the position that if something has a value,  then you look after it.  I am more of the opinion that I can really think of nothing that makes more environmental wisdom than for us in this land to produce our own food from the animals and plants that live here.  To me that sounds like such a sensible thing.   I can’t think of anything that makes more environmental sense than that.  Our agricultural systems are under enormous stress because we have imported systems from Europe.  We have imposed them on one of the world’s most fragile environments and in doing so we have altered that environment immensely.   Take the Western slopes and Plains in NSW for example.    The Australian Agricultural Industry grows beef,  grows wheat and it grows lamb.  This has caused immense environmental harm.   Now, kangaroo production offers us,  in some ways,  a chance to develop agricultural systems that are more adapted to this land.   We know our current systems aren’t sustainable in the next 30 year term,  let alone the next 100 years.   We need to focus more on producing kangaroo which is something we can do as something dramatic needs to be done very quickly.

Q.   Why isn’t eco-tourism a viable option for the KIAA?

A.   It is.  Absolutely.  It’s another thing we can do to improve our sustainability but not every farmer can be a hotel operator or tourist guide.   They are just not those sort of people.  Not everyone is a  peoples’ person who can show tourists around and there are only a certain number of tourists who want to come and see these things.   Kangaroos who sit under gum trees all day during the heat of the day often only come out at night.     You know, the kangaroo is not the Big Game African experience that people will pay money for.   It’s something that has potential but the two aren’t mutually exclusive.   There’s no reason why we can’t look seriously at eco-tourism and harvest kangaroos as well.

Q.   What are your thoughts on people like Juliet Gellatley who comes out here and gets a lot of media coverage on 60 Minutes etc and she’s saying it’s a crime to kill the kangaroo, Australia’s National Emblem.   What are your thoughts on this?

A.   I think it’s more of a crime for people who really know and understand nothing about our environment and the problems in which it faces,  to go and deliberately attempt to vandalise one of the real environmentally friendly options we have to produce food in this country.

The people who oppose the kangaroo industry across the world are radical vegetarians.  They are people who would have us not consume any meat, not keep any pets, not raise any horses, not to do anything with animals in anyway whatsoever!

For them, the kangaroo industry is a soft target. Everytime they run a campaign money flows in for them and it boosts their coppers.   But it is not only kangaroos they want to stop, it’s everything to do with animal utilisation.

Q.   I think one of the concerns that keeps cropping up is the kangaroo industry is not very well monitored in the Outback. That there is hardly any monitoring in the field.   Who even does the monitoring?

A.  Well, infact we have just had a court trial in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal which was launched by some of these radical vegetarians in this country and that was one of their arguments.   That is, that the kangaroo harvest is not adequately monitored.  The Administrative Appeals Tribunal is the highest court in this country for the public to challenge government legislation.   It’s equivalent to the High Court.  It sat for 6 days or something like that and put out a 148-page document.   There was not one word of criticism in that report about how the kangaroo harvest is monitored.

To get a kangaroo harvest licence you have to do a TAFE course in NSW – in every State it’s different.  In NSW it’s done by correspondence – usually takes about 6 months to get but then you have to pass an assessment and accreditation to different government departments.  You have to get licences from both departments.  You have to report back to them monthly on what you took and where from.  You have to purchase an individual lockable tag and affix that to every kangaroo you take.   That has a unique number on it.  You have to record what number it is and what species of ‘Roo it was, what property it came from, when, what sex it was and what weight it was then it gets handed back to the authorities.

Q.  Yes however people have told me that kangaroo shooters out near Tamworth often use Joey’s as bait by the 4-Wheel drive hunter.  He would put the joey under their arm and squeeze her, forcing her to squeak.  This would attract kangaroos in the long grass that would answer to her distress and by lifting their heads out of the long grass, and they get shot.  How do you intend to monitor that?

A.   Anyone who does that is not a commercial kangaroo harvester.   There are people that go out shooting for recreational purposes and sure, that’s just something that exists.  It is illegal but it exists.  Most people do not sell product to the commercial industry.   Now commercial kangaroo harvesters are out there to make a living.  They have to get at least 50 kangaroos a night to make it worth their while.   You can’t take a joey around with you and do that.  These guys are sitting in front of their vehicles,  by themselves,  operating a spot-light,  a rifle and a steering wheel.   There are lots of yahoos going out in 3’s or 4’s doing that sort of stuff but really I think it’s a practice of rural mythology.

Q.  I mean they [radical animal rights people] do have a point.   I mean how do you clean shoot a baby joey?  How can you monitor that and can you begin to rationalise that?

A.  The RSPCA conducted an audit on the welfare outcomes of the kangaroo industry.  The report was released in 2000.   They looked at the results from kangaroo shooting and 99.98% of kangaroos are shot in the head or the rest of the skull – exactly where the kangaroo harvesters are aiming.   That gives them an incredible level of accuracy.  These guys are professionals.  They do it all night, every night for a living.

Q.  How does the annual kill quota come about?   In every State it’s different but the National Parks and Authorities conducts surveys of kangaroo populations by flying over head and counting them manually.  Is that right?

A.  Part of the monitoring of the population is typically done by a 6-wing aircraft or helicopter flying over the survey area.  They are flying at 200 feet.  The bulk of the surveys are conducted by a group out of the university of Queensland who have been doing this research for years.   It doesn’t matter if there is 1,467,201 kangaroos.   What we need to know is if there is about ten and a half million out there,  that the population is increasing dramatically or decreasing alittle bit, presumably as a result of climatic conditions.   This survey has put out a population estimate for each species and in many of them in NSW it is broken into 13 different zones.  They produce a population estimate in each of these zones and depending on what’s happening, in regional conditions with population increasing or decreasing, will release a sustainable harvest quota which will be somewhere between 10-15% of the population.

Q.   Does the KIAA take any measures at all to ensure the kangaroo family unit remains intact.  If the male is targeted [because of his size] and he is a father, what does that do to the rest of the Mob and the other family members?

A.  The only permanent social grouping in kangaroos is between a female and her unweaned offspring. To talk of a '‘family unit' is misleading and not supported by any sound research.

We know of no evidence that suggests that harvesting affects the social organisation of kangaroos in such a way that is detrimental to the long-term persistence of the population.   Indeed all available research indicates harvesting has no such detrimental affect.

Q.  What about diseases from eating wild animals like the kangaroo?

A.  What about them?  is the short answer.   Kangaroos are immensely healthy animals – incredibly healthy.   We have data and they are subject to exactly the same type of post mortem inspection as cattle,  beef,  and lamb and those sort of things.  In one set of data the rejection rate for pathological conditions at post morphem inspection in kangaroos found in that run only a third of that compared to beef or lamb.

Q.  What is your vision for the KIAA?

A.:  I have been the developmental officer for the KIAA for 6 or 8 years.  I would hope that within 10-20 years we’ll actually see pastoral people in this country to start to consider kangaroos as a farming rural enterprise and heavens  forbid, by actually devoting a feed resource for the kangaroo and harvesting them as a farm enterprise.  Which means we’ll see more kangaroos that we have ever seen before and hopefully we’ll see fewer sheep. 

So we’ll start to offer a real part of the solution to the land degradation problems that we have within our grazing rangelands.  At the same time we’ll see the market development prosper and kangaroo meat will hopefully become on restaurant menus – an almost a must-have for all the upper end of the restaurant sector in Australia.

Q.  Is the Minister of the Environment and politicians generally on your side?

A.  Australian politicians are largely very much in support of this as are the professional environmentalists.   Everybody who really understands the situation out there knows that the kangaroo industry is essential for the on-going sustainable management of our Rangelands and are ready for the one real opportunity we have to do it better.