Australia’s kangaroos could starve by the millions if the current population boom is not brought under control, warn wildlife experts and conservation groups, some of whom are even advocating the mass killing of marsupials.
Australia’s symbol, the kangaroo, poses a major environmental concern for the vast country due to its saw-toothed reproductive cycle: their numbers can reach tens of millions when food is plentiful after a good rainy season. But even huge hecatombs can decimate them when food runs out.
“We estimated that during the last drought in certain areas, 80 to 90% of the kangaroos died,” ecologist Katherine Moseby told AFP.
“They enter the public toilets and eat the toilet paper. Or they lie hungry on the street while their young try to feed themselves,” she continues.
According to Ms Moseby, killing kangaroos – and sending them to butcher shops and leather goods factories – would be both a charitable way to save them from excruciating suffering and a means of controlling their population.
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“It keeps the number of animals under control so that there are no animal welfare problems during a drought,” says Moseby. “If we looked at them as a resource and managed them that way, there wouldn’t be the catastrophic deaths we’re seeing.”
The Australian government protects the kangaroo, but the most widespread species is not endangered. This means that they can be hunted with a permit in most of the area.
Up to five million kangaroos are slaughtered for their meat or skin each year. And according to Dennis King of the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia, the country is on the cusp of an animal population boom.
“After three years of La Niña on the east coast, this is the perfect growth scenario for kangaroos for the next two years,” he predicts, referring to the atmospheric phenomenon that has led to heavy rainfall in Australia. “The reproductive cycle speeds up,” notes King.
He estimates Australia’s kangaroo population fell below 30 million after the terrible droughts of the early 2000s, but has since recovered and could soon surpass 60 million.
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massacre
Animal rights organizations have condemned commercial slaughter as a “cruel massacre” and have pressured major global sportswear brands such as Nike and Puma to stop using kangaroo leather in their products.
“Nike divested its only kangaroo leather supplier in 2021 and will cease manufacturing any products containing kangaroo leather in 2023,” a company spokeswoman said in March.
In the US state of Oregon (Northwest), where Nike was founded, elected officials introduced a bill in early 2023 that would ban the use of “any part of a dead kangaroo.”
“These endemic animals are being slaughtered for commercial reasons,” Animals Australia said.
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But campaigns to scrap the industry, no matter how well-intentioned, are misleading, warns George Wilson, a leading expert on kangaroo population management.
“They say it’s unethical. But it’s unethical to let them starve,” he told AFP. “It would be cruel not to do anything,” he adds.
An opinion shared by Ms. Moseby. “There will be no benefit in stopping the killing of kangaroos for their skin or meat,” she says. “It will make things worse.”