Australia Controversy : Kangaroo Kills Anger Conservationists

Queensland farmers, determined to keep kangaroos from destroying their crops, have begun what conservationists fear will be the biggest private slaughter of wildlife in Australian history.

“It’s either that or the farmers lose their incomes,” John Obst of the Queensland Grain Growers Assn. said.

According to the federal government’s estimate, kangaroos outnumber people in Australia.

Environmentalists, who say at least 100,000 kangaroos may be killed privately, vowed to “burn down the fields” in Queensland in protest.

Farmers Take Action

Obst said the association originally planned a one-day shoot but that the overabundance of the big marsupials prompted farmers to take matters--and guns--into their own hands.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service says the shoot is legal as long as the farmers have permits, which they can obtain by establishing that their property is being menaced by the animals. A private shoot on the scale of the one under way is unprecedented.

The Queensland state government has been lobbying for months to have its commercial kangaroo quota raised to 1.88 million from the 1.38 million granted by the federal government for 1985. The federal government this year limited to 2.67 million the number of kangaroos that may be commercially harvested nationwide.

The official commercial harvest is carried out by professional shooters who get licenses from state governments. The skins of the animals killed are used to make leather goods, and the meat is used for pet food.

No Kill Estimate

There was no reliable estimate of the number of animals killed during the past weeks under the special private permits, which are not counted as part of the official quota.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service, which sets commercial quotas, estimates that there are about 20 million kangaroos. Counting is done by aerial survey, which conservationists say could be wildly inaccurate. Australia has a population of about 16 million people.

Obst, the association’s field services manager, could not confirm reports by conservationists that kangaroos were being herded onto electric wires and to water holes that had been poisoned.

‘Bloody Madness’

Sue Arnold of Australians for Animals described the situation as “bloody slaughter madness.”

Another conservationist, Richard Jones of Fund for Animals, said the hunt was “the most irresponsible act that Queensland has ever undertaken.”

“Here we are trying to stop the killing of more than 2 million kangaroos each year and here’s Queensland saying, ‘That isn’t enough. We’ve got to kill more,’ ” he said. “They’ve gone too far this time.”

Farmers in Queensland, which covers nearly a quarter of Australia, say that after three wet winters kangaroos are overabundant and are causing extensive damage to property and crops.

Figures Disputed

“They don’t really know how many kangaroos there are,” Jones said. “They’ve come up with this figure of 20 million and worked out that a 15% kill rate is OK.

“From an airplane it’s impossible to count kangaroos. They’re hard to see, they move quickly and they don’t stay in one place.

“The figure probably is closer to 9 million, perhaps 12 million. At present cull rates, kangaroos could be wiped out.”

Jones took the Queensland government to court last year over the kangaroo issue and won a case charging the state Parks and Wildlife Service with mismanagement.

Farmers Claim Support

He claims that several species of wallaby would be wiped out in the kangaroo drive. There are 47 species of kangaroo, which include the wallaby family, but figures for the different species are not available.