A glut of kangaroos in the
Australian capital of Canberra has prompted calls for a hunt. But a
government survey has found that more than 80 percent of residents
think the wild animals should stay.
CANBERRA, Australia, April 13,
2009
(AP) <!-- sphereit start-->They
bounce across the roof of Parliament House. They collide with cars.
They come in through the bedroom window.
Canberra, Australia's capital, has a problem - too many
kangaroos.
Authorities have tried giving them vasectomies and oral
contraceptives, to no avail. They say trucking them to new and
distant pastures is too expensive. Now they're proposing a cull.
But many people are aghast at the idea of their best-known
marsupial being shot en masse in the national capital.
A government survey has found that more than 80 percent of Canberra
residents think the wild kangaroos should stay.
On the other hand, in a different survey, 17 percent of drivers in
the district reported having collided with a kangaroo at least
once.
Canberra's latest man-vs.-roo horror story concerns a confused
beast, standing about 5 feet 9 inches on its powerful hind legs,
which last month bounded
through a closed bedroom window onto a bed where a couple huddled
with their 9-year-old daughter, then hopped into their 10-year-old
son's bedroom.
The animal was wrestled out of the house by the father, Beat
Ettlin, and headed for the hills, leaving claw marks on a bed and a
trail of blood from broken glass.
Maxine Cooper, environment commissioner for the government of the
Australian Capital Territory, says humans
aren't the only ones at risk - the kangaroos are destroying the
grassy native habitat of endangered species such as a six-inch-long
lizard known as the earless dragon.
But "Compare that to anything furry with big eyes - the human
emotions generally respond to furriness and big eyes," Cooper
said.
In fact, culls are nothing new. Barry Stuart, who runs a kangaroo
abattoir 220 miles north of here, shoots more than 25 on most
nights with a license from the government. "You don't like to
destroy them, but when the time comes, you've got to do it."
"They're a beautiful bloody animal," said Stuart, 60.
But a cull in the capital is likely to be a different matter.
(Left: A 2005 file photo of a mob of kangaroos on the grounds
of Government House in Canberra.)Last year, during the killing
of about 400 kangaroos that had eaten themselves close to
starvation on fenced military land in Canberra, the protests were
so heated that the killers, using stun gun and lethal injections,
had to work behind screens.
This time the opposition will be no less vigorous, warns Pat
O'Brien, president of the Wildlife
Protection Association of Australia, whose
patrons are the family of the late "Crocodile Hunter" Steve
Irwin.
O'Brien insists that, earless dragons notwithstanding, Canberra's
kangaroos pose no environmental problems.
"It's disgraceful that people want to shoot our national symbol,"
O'Brien said. "The days when wildlife is managed with a gun should
be long passed."
No one knows how many kangaroos are at-large in and around the city
of 340,000 people, but its forested hills, grasslands and parks
make it perfect kangaroo country, and Cooper says their number
needs to be reduced by thousands, and urgently.
Populations began exploding after European settlers arrived some
220 years ago and felled forests into which the plant-eating
kangaroos swarmed and multiplied.
The struggle to manage and control Australia's flora and fauna,
native and imported, seems never-ending. Fences thousands of miles
long have gone up to keep out rabbits and wild dog called dingoes.
Up to 1 million feral camels introduced as pack animals in the 19th
century are denuding the central desert regions.
Last month Australians slaughtered thousands of poisonous toads
whose forebears were imported from South America in 1935 to protect
sugarcane plantations.
The larger of the more than 60 kangaroo species have bred so
abundantly in some areas that they threaten crops and denude their
own natural habitat.
Government-licensed hunters nationwide shoot an annual quota. They
head out at night when kangaroos are at their busiest, and often
return with carcasses dangling from hooks on the back of their
trucks.
The quota varies. For 2009 it's about 4 million, the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia
says. Many more will be shot by farmers, who are allowed to kill
them to protect crops.
The meat, once widely considered only good enough for pet food, now
reaches European restaurants as steaks, and the hides make premium
leather.
The public has until May 11 to make its views known. Sometime after
that a decision will be made and a quota set.
The government, citing "economic, social and regulatory factors,"
says the carcasses will be buried rather than sold for meat.
That's a pity, says Stuart, but so are culls.
"No one likes wild animals more than I do - I'm a real softhearted
old bugger," he said. "But you've got to manage them, otherwise
you'll be overrun by the bloody things." <!-- sphereit
end-->
