Nature reserves to close as government starts annual kangaroo cull

I am deeply curious about the cull protestors who continue every year to make claims about kangaroo extinction, in spite of an abundance of readily available evidence (e.g. Chook58 says that the 2025 cull will be ‘endgame for kangaroos’). Can the ACT Government sponsor a PhD project to look into their heads?

Such claims are part of a larger pattern with kangaroos and other animals nationally and internationally, so the study findings might help wildlife professionals all around the world.

In contrast to protestors’ claims that the little Canberra cull causes extinction, experienced ecologists who have spent decades earning their qualifications and their reputations have a different view, e.g. according to Legge (2024): “There are about 6 million eastern grey kangaroos in NSW west of the Divide. [My] review estimates that there are about 122,000 eastern grey kangaroos in the ACT, of which most are in the large protected areas in the west and south of the ACT (43%) and on rural lands and government horse paddocks (26%). Canberra Nature Park and other lands managed for conservation contain about 26% of the population, and 5% is on Commonwealth land and in plantations (1%). Conservation culling therefore kills less than 2% of the ACT kangaroo population every year, road kills around Canberra affect around 3%, and rural culls affect 7%. https://www.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/2589035/independent-review-act-eastern-grey-kangaroo-controlled-native-species-management-plan.pdf

The sheer number of kangaroos targeted this year defines this year’s bloodbath as an endgame for kangaroos. An increase of 2,981 in the population of kangaroos living on Canberra’s urban nature reserves is biologically impossible, flying in the face of the fact that kangaroos have only one baby a year, most of whom die in infancy, like most young of most wild animal species. It also defies growing evidence that kangaroo populations Australia-wide have been reduced to barely 10% of their numbers at the time of European settlement.

If a quoll kills a joey then a dingo kills the quoll, is the dingo guilty, or the quoll?

If the joey was innocent, would that mean the quoll was also innocent when it was killed?

If they were different species, would that make a difference – if the quoll had been a fox and the kangaroo had been a rabbit, for example?

These ridiculous questions help us appreciate that animals are never guilty nor innocent – justice is entirely inapplicable with animals. If you were in any doubt, a little more thought along the lines of the examples given will help you appreciate that justice doesn’t apply to animals. (I am not suggesting that we aren’t obligated morally, culturally and legally, to treat animals properly).

What does this say about people who join an Animal ‘Justice’ Party? Are they the sorts of people who do not think deeply – not people who carefully and meticulously consider the rights and wrongs of what they say and do before they say and do them?

I know I know, people in other countries are legislating for rivers to have the rights of people. So if a NZ river can be a person, surely a Canberra kangaroo must be a person too? So everyone who hits a kangaroo with their car is committing manslaughter. Right?
No. Rivers are rivers, no matter how much indigenous groups say they are people.

Kangaroos are not people either. People are within their rights to humanely take the lives of animals where it is sustainable, ecologically sound, legal, in accordance with expert advice, and in line with community expectations. The proposition that an ‘Animal Justice Party’ would know more about the rightness of the cull, than a large number of experts, is just silly.

Round trip from Lanyon, Kingston, back to Lanyon… No less that 8 dead roos on or beside the road.. Culling cant come soon enough..

I used to be against the Kangaroo Cull but as the years went by I learnt more about how life/the universe works. I know of others who are against the Cull, they tell me all sorts of ‘horror stories’ about how the Kangaroos are killed and what happens to the bodies but after working with ACT Park Rangers and participating in Kangaroo Counts, the things I hear sound ‘out of character.’

Do they use the Kangaroo meat and fur?