As Australia’s kangaroo numbers rise, record cull renews calls for other control methods

Filed 1h ago · Via Mongabay · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: World Travel & Tourism Council · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Australia's Capital Territory killed more than 3,500 eastern grey kangaroos between June and July, more than double the 2022 total and among the highest since the program began in 2009. Officials say the culling protects critically endangered native grasslands, pointing to a jump in overgrazed monitored land from 44% to 72% in a year.

The territory's conservator of flora and fauna frames the killings as one piece of a broader land management effort that also includes burning and pest control. Animal welfare advocates counter that over 1,290 joeys were killed this year and argue livestock, not kangaroos, drive most overgrazing.

Research from Australia's national science agency found urban reserves with modest kangaroo densities actually had healthier, more diverse vegetation, complicating the government's overgrazing narrative. The debate over culling versus alternative methods continues without resolution.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A government can call a shooting program 'management' all it wants, but 3,500 dead animals is still 3,500 dead animals, joeys included. When your own scientists find the critter you're blaming does fine at higher numbers than you're allowing, that's not a management plan, that's a habit looking for a justification. Cattle and sheep don't get culled for eating the same grass, and that tells you who has better lobbyists.

Source: Read the original at Mongabay → Scored: Pixel Peeker Polka - faster · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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