Kangaroos: Myths and Realities

BOOK REVIEW Kangaroos: Myths and Realities by Maryland Wilson and David B Croft The Australian Wildlife Protection Council Inc. Enquiries: 247 Flinders Lane Melbourne, Vic. 3000 Australia kangaroo@peninsula.hotkey.net.au Reviewed by Margaret Setter

The kangaroo is synonymous with Australia throughout the world.  This iconic animal is depicted on our national airline, our coat of arms and our coinage.  It forms part of the Australian identity.  It is therefore a tragedy for all concerned that the annual kangaroo ‘cull' represents the largest terrestrial slaughter of animals in the world, on a par with the Canadian baby seal hunt that has sparked opposition from many countries.

To degrade the status of kangaroos in the quest for profit from the sale of their body parts and skins is to degrade all Australians.  The kangaroo industry diminishes us all in the eyes of the international community.

It is hypocritical for the Australian government to preach to the Japanese about their whaling activities while at the same time actively encouraging the kangaroo slaughter.

At the 2005 meeting of the International Whaling Commission, the head of the Japanese delegation drew attention to this double standard.

It is pertinent to ask why the Australian government recognises the economic value of the tourist dollar in relation to whales yet continues to ignore the possibility of a $6bn tourist industry based on our kangaroos and other Australian wildlife.

Kangaroos Myths and Realities, funded by the animal welfare charitable organisation

Voiceless, brings together an array of distinguished contributors such as Australian philosopher Peter Singer, eminent scientists, historians, psychologists and other professionals – each one presenting a perspective that in total, constitutes a powerful case for saving and protecting the kangaroo.

The introduction by Maryland Wilson, President of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council, is dedicated to the memory of Latrobe University geologist, Peter Rawlinson, who died aged 48 on April 13 1991. Peter Rawlinson was an outstanding academic campaigner, and with his death the kangaroos lost their champion.

 In 1983 he accompanied Richard Jones MP and Marjorie Wilson, who has devoted her life to the kangaroo cause, to testify in front of the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington DC, where his expert evidence was crucial in stopping Australian Government moves to de-list kangaroos from the US Threatened Species Act.  This initiative gave the kangaroo population a twelve-year breathing space until March 7, 1995.

On this day, following intense lobbying by Australian interests based on the kangaroo industry, kangaroos were de-listed and the US market was once again open to receive kangaroo-based products.   Maryland Wilson comments that with no obvious scientific opposition, “a group of self-serving scientists, regulators and industry lobbyists combined to create an industry that artificially manipulates kangaroo populations to breed next year's “crop”; a situation that continues to worsen year by year.

The kangaroo exploitation lobby has striven to preserve the myth of kangaroo in plague proportions threatening Australian agriculture.   The conventional wisdom is that kangaroo numbers have increased since European settlement, largely because of pasture improvements and increased access to water gradually made available during the 19^th century.  Even the well-known scientist, Tim Flannery, author of The Future Eaters argues, “ Clearly, red kangaroos were much rarer early last century than they are today”.  (Flannery 1994: 214).

In a paper titled Red Plague Grey Plague, The Kangaroo Myths and Legends, scientist and historian, Dr John Auty, confounds the conventional wisdom with evidence from historical records of 19^th century explorers and commentators.  Most accounts describe kangaroos as being either ‘numerous' or ‘abundant' throughout the Australian continent and Tasmania.  In areas where few or no kangaroos were sighted, explorers attributed this to land clearing and heavy hunting pressure exerted by Europeans and their hunting dogs.

Auty states, ‘The aborigines were, at best, poor kangaroo hunters'. At the time of first contact they had domesticated the dingo.  They were not used to hunt kangaroos for obvious reasons.   Dingoes, as solitary hunters, have no hope of bringing down a redoubtable fighter such as a healthy adult kangaroo.  Introduced X-bred European breeds hunted in packs, four or five of them capable of taking on a kangaroo.  Auty reveals that in some places, every farm or station kept such dogs for hunting purposes.

Aborigines quickly copied European techniques. 

“The numbers of kangaroos present in Australia at the time of European settlement can be estimated on the basis of introduced herbivores supported on improved pasture and browse.  The population was probably of the order of one to two hundred million”.

It is one of the prevailing myths of the kangaroo industry that ‘harvesting' the kangaroo will help feed the world's poor, save the ecology and make farmers ‘stinking rich'. This myth was shattered when, in 1991, The Australian Conservation Foundation pointed out that the amount of meat obtained from a kangaroo could only amount to 0.5% of Australia's present meat production.  Only 10% of the kangaroo carcass is fit for human consumption, providing about 5kg of edible meat.

The manner of their dying is indeed harsh.  Former shooter David Nicholls relates, “kangaroo shooting is inherently and overtly cruel by all standards that can be applied and would not be acceptable to reasonable thinking people, if they knew”.

“The mouth of a kangaroo can be blown off and the kangaroo can escape to die of shock and starvation.  Forearms can be blown off, as can ears, eyes and noses.  Stomachs can be hit expelling the contents with the kangaroo still alive.  Backbones can be pulverized to an unrecognizable state etc.  Hind legs can be shattered with the kangaroo desperately trying to get away. The in-pouch joey is taken from its mother's pouch, its head smashed in by (often repeated) blows to the head. To deny that this goes on is just an exercise in attempting to fool the public.”

Kakkib li'Dthia Warrawee', Aboriginal author, spiritual teacher/philosopher, Doctor of Ya-idt'midtung Medicine and senior elder of the Ya-idt language group expresses strong opinions. “‘Whitefellas' are just as greedy and destructive as those who stepped ashore 200 years ago”.  They “do not know anything about the country they invaded, can't speak the language, and have no real knowledge of the plants and birds and animals and fish and insects and earth”…”but they have power.”

Dr Ingrid Witte (UNNSW) is a refreshing voice, replacing the distanced, third person approach so favoured by scientists, and presents a more subjective, committed defence of the animals she loves.  She wonders whether humans as a species cannot deal with another animal ‘that has so far refused to submit to our human onslaught”.  “Will our ignorance and apathy as to their fate end with them being seen only in zoos”? 

Ingrid relates her personal journey when, beginning as a child in Germany; she saw a documentary with a segment on kangaroos that ignited a life-long passion. Her dream was realized after she came to Australia, became a scientist and specialized in the behavioural ecology of the large species of kangaroos.

In her scientific work involving radio-tracking individual kangaroos and observational studies of a large number of kangaroos over three years, she learned to identify a large number of individuals.  She got close to her ‘subjects' who ‘challenged her understanding' of their survival strategies and ‘rich but subtle social lives'.  She became a surrogate mother for the injured and orphaned, in experiences she claims ‘allowed me a far better insight into kangaroo behaviour than what I would have been able to understand without them'.

‘How a professional shooter after so many years in the business still understands so little about the animal he shoots remains a mystery to me'.  ‘All a shooter has to do to obtain a trappers license is to have a valid firearms license, a TAFE certificate for safe food handling and to show that he can hit a target at over 80m, when in fact it is likely he will more often be shooting at a range of over 200m'. 

This ignorance on the part of the professional shooter leads to acts of cruelty to young joeys that would cause a public outcry in the livestock industries.  No farmer with any sense of decency would dispatch a lactating cow to the slaughterhouse, if it meant condemning the calf to death by starvation and dehydration.  Yet every night countless joeys-at-foot are consigned to this cruel fate without a sign of remorse or recognition from the shooter.   The industry argument that this is somehow normal and acceptable given the high juvenile mortality in ‘natural' populations, she describes as ‘fatuous'.

This is a most elegant book, replete with over 100 full-colour pictures, graphs and maps. I recommend it to be read and enjoyed both for its intrinsic beauty and interest, but also as an invaluable tool in the fight to stop Australia's wild animals becoming just another commodity to be bought and sold on the market, to help them take their rightful place among the revered animal icons of this planet.