Submission 240

“Australia currently lacks any valid form of federal governance or leadership in animal protection. Under Australia’s constitutional arrangements, responsibility for animal protection law and enforcement is principally held by state and territory governments. In the absence of Federal governance, states must provide clear strategic direction in policy and reform, facilitate appropriate standards informed by sound science. It must commission and transparently consider independent expertise in the formulation of such policy and enforce its principles. Tothis end, the NSW Government must consider and implement the development of an Independent Office of Animal Welfare (‘IOAW’) to ensure best practice is adhered to unencumbered by conflicts of interest..“

Submission 72

“The annual slaughter of kangaroos is not for Conservation or to protect temperate grasslands or other species, since the kangaroos are not responsible for over grazing or driving other species to extinction.

Many politicians quote "threatened species" such as the legless lizard, as being a reason for kangaroo culls, but I, along with many other people in Canberra, remember this "excuse" being given to cull the kangaroos, and then housing developments being built on the exact land that the legless lizard habitat. Here's one just one example:

“They were looking for species (the legless lizard) – hidden under the cover of dense grass tussocks – that will be affected when the land is cleared for a new development due to be built in coming years".

https://www.bushheritage.org.au/newsletters/2015/summer/chancelegless-lizard

Dr Daniel Ramp states that “the argument kangaroo grazing has impacted the population of animals such as legless lizards is incorrect because there is evidence the reptile's populations can survive well in areas where kangaroos inhabit, so long as there is no pressure from humans”. https://www.theage.com.au/national/act/doubts-overkangaroo-culling-science-20160408-go1u5k.html

Dr Daniel Ramp goes on to say that, "There are populations of legless lizards doing perfectly well in areas where there are lots of kangaroos in Canberra” https://www.theage.com.au/national/act/doubts-overkangaroo-culling-science-20160408-go1u5k.html

Politicians that I have emailed (Mick Gentleman) claim that research shows that kangaroo numbers have to be ‘culled’ to prevent ‘high densities’ of kangaroos impacting on other biodiversity, but the only independent research untaken since the annual slaughters began (by CSIRO Plant Industries) shows that populations of up to three kangaroos per hectare benefit the biodiversity of ACT reserves. The alarming find to come out of this research was that effects of over three kangaroos per hectare could not be assessed because kangaroos were not found in higher densities on any Canberra reserves! That's because this government is allowing them to be slaughtered at a rate that is unsustainable! This government continues to ignore research form the CSIRO, which state that the culling of kangaroos in ACT nature parks and other grassland is unnecessary and is actually counterproductive.

“Having killed of the majority of kangaroos in the Canberra nature park, and with the grass growing under their feet, the government has resorted to cattle grazing, slashing, and mowing, as well as wide scale back burning, to reduce the risk of bushfire. And I think we can all guess what activity causes more harm to the environment”. Philip Machin, Wamboin, NSW

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6110203/misinformation-rifeover-unnecessary-kangaroo-cull/

“Overgrazing" by kangaroos as another reason that is used for them for them to be "culled". This is a completely absurd and almost laughable excuse to slaughter kangaroos! If "overgrazing" were really an issue, then the government would have to allow shooters to "cull" all of the sheep and cattle in Canberra (and Australia) as their grazing pressure on Australian grazing land is 95 percent (UNSW, CSIRO), whereas kangaroos only have a 5 percent grazing pressure on low intensity Australian grazing land. Sheep and cattle also outnumber kangaroos in Australia by 4:1, so you don't even have to be a mathematician to work out which animals are really responsible for "overgrazing" in Australia! “

Submission 270

“The management of kangaroos in NSW is in breach of every piece of legislation that is supposed to protect the environment and our wildlife, simply on the basis that, in my opinion, it is materially and deliberately ommissive and misleading. Confected / inflated population estimates are being produced to service a commercial exploitative industry, which provides outcomes (population reduction) that are actively pursued by the farming sector, and which therefore has 100% political support. The program is in no way based on rigorous and defensible science according to my analysis, and a lack of critique or questioning seems to be underwritten by a long-term promotional and strategic communications campaign that seems to have established as fact the fiction of supposed population increase under a range of untested pretexts, and that “the industry is well-regulated and sustainable.”

The most serious threat to kangaroos, shooting, has been inexplicably left off this list. Every kangaroo shot results in the kangaroo population instantaneously declining by one. If a doe is shot, then the joey she has and every joey that she was ever going to have in her lifetime, and all of their joeys for all time disappear from the account books. Populations are severely impacted by shooting, as shooting is indiscriminate.

MISMANAGEMENT: Official survey methodologies and the harvest model contained critical flaws from the “regulated” industries inception in the 1970s. The aspirational harvest rate exceeds species’ reproductive rates, and shooting during drought when populations are in decline was always going to be a disaster.

CLIMATE CHANGE (particularly increased heat) causes increased mortality in juveniles and reduced fertility in males. For a species with an already low rate of reproduction this is very serious. Climate change is also expected to result in increased incidence and severity of DROUGHT, with serious implications for kangaroo persistence, where populations crash during drought and generational loss of fertility occurs in does. Natural decline is exacerbated under intensified shooting regimes during drought, as farmers react to perceived impacts of kangaroos on their livelihoods by blaming kangaroos for the damage caused principally by stock, and generations of farming practices that have degraded environmental systems.

WATER: Converse to popular opinion, the science confirms that installation of artificial water points does not increase the persistence or density of kangaroos. Further, dams act as population sinks, concentrating the interactions of shooters and other predators onto points of intersection with kangaroos in water-depleted landscapes. In addition as dams dry out and become muddy bog-holes they act as a source of direct mortality, as animals are drawn to the water, and become bogged and die in the mud.

Note that despite the dominant discourse on the topic, in fact there is less water in the landscape today than there was prior to the occupation of landscapes for agriculture and establishment of artificial water points (AWPs). Early explorers described deep clear pools fringed with vegetation, which they revisited later to find cattlemen and sheep-herders had often claimed the land and waterholes were degraded, trodden into muddy bog-holes, and destroyed by sheep and cattle.

Rivers, streams and ephemeral water courses have run dry or been diverted, lakes and wetlands have dried out. Extraction of water through bores has decreased pressure in the Great Artesian Basin so that ancient mound springs have ceased to flow in arid zones, and bores in national parks have been shut off.

Farmers protect every drop of water for their stock. The “proliferation” of AWPs has not turned Australia into a wonderland for kangaroos. In fact AWPs have increased the range and impact of stock animals, so that landscapes in the rangelands are no longer half-as-productive as they were historically (according to Archer et al (1985)).

BUSHFIRE: I was engaged to dart and euthanase burnt animals in and around the fire-grounds of the Blue Mountains and Cooma districts during the bushfires in 2019-2020. I have witnessed first-hand the impacts of bushfire on macropod species, and I was sometimes surprised at the numbers which made it through unscathed. This seemed to depend on their place in the landscape, the behavior of the fire and the nature of the fire-fighting response. However few animals that were affected by the fires were able to be saved; who knows how many were killed. Ramp (unpublished) reported 27 out of 30 radio-collared Swamp Wallabies died in a fire or in the weeks after a fire in Kuring--Gai Chase National Park (pers comm), and there may have been a similar or greater scale of loss in Namadgi National Park in the ACT historically (some mobs studied historically seem to have disappeared), so impacts of fire can be severe.

Impacts of habitat loss (LAND-CLEARING for any number of reasons) are second only to the impacts of SHOOTING, and is complementary. The science confirms long-term persistence of kangaroos is dependent on habitat (shelter in the form of remnant vegetation and grazing opportunities). Short & Grigg (1982) reported that clearing exposed kangaroos to “the measures brought against them” by farmers, and described the devastating impact of broad-scale agriculture on kangaroo populations.

Clearing of bushland is not good for kangaroos: Arnold et al (1995) reported that after the size of remnants (kangaroos dropped out of landscapes once remnants became less than ~2ha in area), the second most important factor influencing persistence was the absence of humans.

Kangaroos trapped by urban development often suffer from increased mortality which is the path to localized extinction (see Brunton (2018)). Sometimes they are deliberately killed because they are in the way of development (cases of this in the ACT are clear). In other instances they are simply ignored as development proceeds, and they are pushed out of occupied habitats into surrounding farmland and get themselves involved in the commercial space, or they are dispersed onto roads, or into suburbs, and simply die as collateral

There is also an increasing interest in killing kangaroos in conservation areas and even in NGO conservation properties as a consequence of reports of supposed kangaroo impacts on conservation values, or on seemingly “preferred” species. This gathering narrative ignores the millions of years that kangaroos co-evolved with an incredible diversity and abundance of wildlife in Australia, before the arrival of the Europeans. This agenda seems to have principally been driven out of the ACT in recent years, where they have described kangaroos as “a major threat to biodiversity” (Fletcher (2014)).

Confusingly in one example where the kangaroos were killed purportedly to protect a rare lizard, the lizards were later caught and removed, and the area was covered in housing, confirming that URBAN DEVELOPMENT is also a direct threat to the species.

EXCLUSION FENCING has been brought in under the guise of wild dog management, however kangaroos seem to be the principle victim of management programs conducted within exclusion fenced areas. This is a program that is supported by funding from government offices, possibly in an effort to win favour with the farming sector. Normal rural fencing also kills and injures thousands of kangaroos annually, and contributes to the increasingly anthropocentric landscape’s continuous grinding daily toll on numbers. If kangaroos manage to escape entanglement they often do so with injuries to their feet and legs which can take weeks to kill them (pers obs).

Submission 234

“ The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (POCTA) applies to kangaroos and kangaroo shooters. In theory therefore, shooters would be committing an act of cruelty to a kangaroo if they committed an ‘act or omission as a consequence of which the animal is unreasonably, unnecessarily or unjustifiably… beaten, …killed, wounded, …mutilated, maimed, abused, tormented, tortured, terrified or …inflicted with pain’ (ss4(2) and 5).

The ADO is unaware of any actual investigations into or proceedings against shooters for failing to comply with animal welfare laws in the course of shooting kangaroos. Rather than indicating compliance with those laws, this instead suggests a complete absence of enforcement activity and consequential failure to detect offences.

The ADO submits that enforcement agencies under the POCTA Act, being RSPCA NSW, the Animal Welfare League, and NSW Police, should monitor commercial and non-commercial kangaroo shooting at the killing points, to ensure compliance with animal welfare laws. Animal cruelty complaints and tip-offs from industry participants should also be encouraged, even if on an anonymous basis. Finally, monitoring and inspections relating to animal welfare laws should be reported in kangaroo management program annual reports.

The final word in these submissions will be left not to a lawyer but to a philosopher. In 2005, the internationally renowned Australian philosopher Peter Singer proposed what would be a gamechanger for how the law regards wildlife:

‘We need a Mabo decision for Australia’s wild animals, a legal recognition of their special status as original residents of Australia, alongside its original [human] inhabitants. The only ethical approach is one that gives their interests equal consideration alongside similar human interests. ‘

In 2021, such a legal recognition is more urgent than ever for NSW’s kangaroos in light of the vast numbers killed across the State, the pain and suffering inflicted on so many of the victims, and the fundamental flaws and gaps in the legal framework that is supposedly designed to protect them.“

Mark Pearson and Emma Hurst from the Animal Justice Party have done amazing work and achieved so much for animals in the NSW senate. Mark Pearson instigated the 2021 NSW Senate Enquiry into the Health and Wellbeing of Kangaroos and Macropods which has helped to bring the plight of our kangaroos into public awareness.

See kangaroos on AJP website