This week, we started the annual killing of over 1000 kangaroos by military-style weapons, decapitation and clubbing to death.
The ACT Government calls it a ‘conservation cull’ and hopes Canberrans will continue to be fooled by the label. However, the Government’s own data, policies and publications reveal the horrifying truth.
The culling of kangaroos commenced in 2009 and 30,000 kangaroos have been killed. Approximately two thirds of kangaroos killed were adults. The rest were joeys, dragged from their mother’s pouch.
Under a ‘National Code’ (1) the adults were shot by ‘centrefire rifles’, which are powerful weapons, used by soldiers around the world.
In 2022, the ACT Government’s records showed 1645 kangaroos were killed, comprising 722 males and 923 females. Joeys were 608 of the total kangaroos killed. (2)
The Code requires shooters to check their kill for joeys, drag them from their dead mother’s pouch and kill them in one of three ways:
- Having their head smashed by a hammer or swung by their tail and smashed onto a rock or tree
- Decapitation by severing the head with a blade
- Shooting the joey in the head or heart at point blank range.
This information is contained in the Government’s own publicly available documents. The most heartbreaking thing is it does not need to happen. The bushfires of a couple of summers ago devastated the populations of animals throughout the country, and they are yet to recover.
The Government also has the ability to use fertility control, delivered by a dart gun.
The ACT Greens website says their official policy since 2004 is to support “a network of wildlife corridors, employing more conservation workers, funding more First Nations-led conservation initiatives” and that “shooting is a conservation method of last resort”. (3)
And yet, the annual massacre continues without pursuing these options, despite having 19 years to implement them.
The time has long passed for the Labor-Greens self-proclaimed ‘most progressive government in Australia’ to end the barbaric and archaic slaughter.
If Canberrans are proud to have the kangaroo standing atop Parliament House as part of our national coat of arms, we should have the courage and decency to stop them from being killed in our reserves and grasslands in the suburbs around it.
- Kel Watt, Braddon ACT, @wattadvocacy
