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The Facts

Kangaroos are a much loved and iconic Australian species. People come from all over the world to see them. Yet they are getting harder and harder to find. Since first white settlement in 1788 they have been hunted relentlessly, largely because, as herbivores, they are seen as competitors by the sheep and cattle industries.

It has been estimated that in 1788 there were between 100 and 200 million kangaroos in Australia. Over the last fifty years the mean population has hovered around 25 million.

Although the kangaroo is officially a protected species, the federal and state governments, farming lobbies and the kangaroo ‘industry’ insist that kangaroos are a pest, in ‘plague’ proportions, and must be managed by continual shooting.

Even official government figures show, however, that in some parts of the country kangaroos are nearing extinction, that the overall kangaroo population is declining, and that the process of ‘harvesting’ is doing them irreparable damage.

Many more kangaroos are shot than are ever counted. For the last decade around 400,000 kangaroos per year have been processed by the kangaroo industry in New South Wales alone. It has been estimated that as many more in the state are privately shot.

Perhaps as many more will never be counted. The kangaroo industry itself stipulates that only males be shot, but shooting takes place at night and often from such distances it’s hard to tell a kangaroo’s sex. It’s estimated up to one in three kangaroos shot is female. Many others, mortally wounded, flee into the dark and are never found. Countless joeys are brutally slaughtered, their brains crushed by blunt instruments (as stipulated by a national code of practice), or left to starve when their mothers are killed. Everywhere the survivors suffer from loss of range and habitat, disruption of familial and social bonds, and the devastating psychological impacts of the shootings.

This relentless killing of kangaroos is the largest land-based commercial slaughter of wildlife in the world. The animal cruelty involved is unconscionable. It is time to recognise this senseless massacre for the national shame and disgrace that it is, and demand the government bring it to an end.