We do need an Animal Justice Party NOW! Our kangaroos are dying of fluoride poisoning apparently from dust levels from a brick factory at Craigieburn and the Alcoa aluminium smelting plant near Portland. DSE was informed of the problem in 2008 and the EPA was told in 2005, but signs of fluoride-related symptoms in kangaroos were noted as early as 2001. DSE's wildlife statistics are unreliable and the EPA is known as a toothless tiger, but how many of us would have thought there was enough fluoride dust out there to kill herds of kangaroos? And where does that put humans, especially children?

Australians have been very reluctant to come to the party when it comes to eating kangaroos themselves, maybe it's got something to do with us viewing roo meat as something that is only fit for the dog. So what is the dog actually eating? Is it euro chunks? Diced eastern grey? Maybe minced Bennetts wallaby? Does it matter? Maybe it is easier for us to stomach roo meat when we don't have to put a face to it ... a sort of miscellaneous meat.

Someone else who isn't impressed by the Australian and state governments' statistics and treatment of wildlife. 6000 signatures already on the petition!
See alsoDamning Auditor General Reports on Fauna protection in Australia
(Photo by Brett Clifton)

Dame Judi Dench, one of Britain’s best loved and respected actors and a great animal welfare supporter, has supported the campaign to ban kangaroo products from import by all EU member states. "As a lover of animals and their welfare I am pleased to add my name to the many others across the world who are supporting this very worthwhile campaign.” (Judi Dench)

Is it any wonder people who care about the world feel disempowered and ineffective when they wait months for a reply from a politician and, if they get one at all, find it is a form letter that fails to address the concerns they raised?

How can you and I make a difference when our leaders aren't listening to us? Do we become apathetic and give up or do we try new tactics?

This is an ongoing blog that I invite you to contribute to by way of reply. Perhaps together we can find what does work, if anything. It's our future - if we let the corporations and leaders who are corrupted by them call the shots, we won't have one.

Landholders in Victoria are being given permits to kill tens of thousands of protected kangaroos every year, even in good seasons and in areas not affected by drought. This is despite research showing that kangaroos do not compete with stock for pasture. Kangaroos are also being shot without proper assessment of population numbers, locally or regionally, putting them at risk of local and regional extinction. This is despite the some one million native animals killed on Black Saturday.
(photo source: www.business.vic.gov.au)

An article by Associated Press entitled "Kangaroo tries to drown dog, attacks owner" dated Tuesday, 24 November 2009 (today), naturally drew the author's attention... "A kangaroo startled by a man walking his dog attacked the pair, pinning the pet underwater and slashing the owner in the abdomen with its hind legs. The Australian, Chris Rickard, was in stable condition Monday after the attack, which ended when the 49-year-old elbowed the kangaroo in the throat.

The 2009 mass slaughter of kangaroos across western New South Wales and Queensland is of a slaughter scale approximating the 1994 genocide of ethic Tutsis in Rwanda by the dominant Hutus. Estimates of the death toll of the The Rwandan Genocide have ranged between 500,000 and 1,000,000, or as much as 20% of the total population.

Back in Australia, according to the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia, a sustainable quota for the number of kangaroos which can be slaughtered each year is typically 15-20% of the total population. Total numbers are withheld from the public.

In March of this year we reported on the impact of the worst fires in Australia's history on Wildhaven, in Kinglake, Victoria. This animal rehab and refuge, from which many native animals had been released after expert care, was burned to the ground. Countless indigenous animals perished along with human beings. Stella was with the Country Fire Brigade, fire-fighting, while Alan Reid was trapped by fire at Wildhaven and almost died. Both survived and they are looking after wildlife orphans and hardship cases again. Stella has sent these wonderful photos of a juvenile wallaby, about thirty centimeters high, and her playmates, young kangaroos. Please enjoy and protect and preserve these values.

On 5th May 2009, Members of the European Parliament voted in favour of adopting strict conditions for the placing on the market of seal products in the European Union.

The way kangaroo joeys are slaughtered by 'professionals' is comparable to that still inflicted on Canadian fur seal pups. Australian poaching of its wildlife places it culturally backward in the 19th Century. Australian society needs to wake up to what is happening outback and call for immediately bans on wildlife killing including banning the State-sanctioned industrial poaching of kangaroos. The so-called kangaroo 'industry' is no different to the fur seal 'industry'. They are each shameful practices of immoral brutality.

The role of biodiversity in climate change adaptation a report for the Office of the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment, August 2009, finds that maintaining biodiversity, notably kangaroos, reduces fire danger and makes the landscape more resilient. It criticises the culling of kangaroos in Canberra and notes the oddness of referring to them as if they are outside the eco-system, when talking about restoring damaged land. The report also suggests that kangaroos have their own ways of managing their numbers and that 'management' of kangaroo numbers, by interfering with them, is likely to cause population problems. The report contradicts policies defended by Dr Fletcher, ACT government zoologist, although Fletcher's own PHD thesis would support this report's findings, but his department doesn't.

Australia's Federal Minister for the Environment (etc), Peter Garett MP, controls and administers a national legal code permitting various species of kangaroos to be killed for commercial gain and export of meat and hides. Nationally this permission is prescribed under the National Code of Practice for the Humane Shooting of Kangaroos and Wallabies for Commercial Purposes' [The Code]

The “exploding kangaroo population” in Thargomindah Queensland, apparently, is because Russia has banned the sale of roo meat.  It sounds like the kangaroo industry pushing their own agenda! The media has reported stupid things like a a woman who was too scared to hang her washing out because of the kangaroo coming close to the town, implying very strongly that they are creating a safety problem as well!

First rally in NSW an outstanding success, attracting MPs who want to counter the growing moves to institutionalise cruelty and abuse of Australian wildlife for commercial and bloodsport interests in our National Parks. Tuesday 27 October in NSW there will be another protest against the Shooters Party legislation, at midday outside Parliament House. See inside about male kangaroo act of altruism.

Venue: Belmore Park, Eddie Avenue end, opposite Central Railway; Date: Saturday, 24th October
Time: 11.30am to set up, 12.00pm - 2.00pm for the rally
"In the last decade, permits have been issued to allow the commercial slaughter of 49.6 million kangaroos primarily to give household pets a bit of variety in their diet. That is but one instance of a set of behaviours that suggests that, with a population of 22 million people, we haven’t managed to find accommodation with our environment. Our record has been poor and in my view we are not well placed to deal effectively with the environmental challenges posed by a population of 35 million." (Australian Secretary of Treasury, Ken Henry)

First new patient in Wildhaven since the fires.
The large and serious eyes in the long face make you think of E.T., but this is actually a tiny baby kangaroo. He will grow up for the next couple of years in the experienced hands of Wildlife carers, Stella and Allen Reid. When he is released into the adjacent forest, he will also have learned how to live like a kangaroo, but at the moment - still a little baby - he is living in two worlds.

Kangaroos are nationally denigrated as 'pests' and in plague proportions. But are they? This article finally reveals the critical ecological significance of kangaroos and compares them to feral livestock, who are conveniently ignored in the discussion of pests and plagues of pests.

"Russia has just announced a ban on all kangaroo products from the 1st August, citing consistent contamination." Lately our politicians have been "trying to convince the Chinese to buy the rejected Russian export kangaroo slush. " (Pat O'Brien, ex-butcher and current President of Wildlife Protection Association of Australia - Patron Steve Irwin).

Eastern Grey Kangaroos should be safe in our "Bush Capital", however, they are being rounded up, hounded and killed! Jon Stanhope is the Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory.

Shortly after Australians learned of the Chinese practice of confining bears for life in metal corsets and draining them of bile, I noticed Melbourne Zoo was selling little toy bears that were 'made in China'. Lately I cannot help noticing the mushrooming of Chinese tourist shops here selling cute toy kangaroos alongside purses made out of kangaroo testicles. And Australia has an anti-whaling policy but officially condones kangaroo massacres.
What is wrong with our politicians?

Professor Steve Garlick writes that he has received a disturbingly poor account from the RSPCA of their supervision of the mass killing of kangaroos in the ACT.

Human Population growth impacts on wildlife: The endangered Earless Dragon is being used to justify killing thousands of Eastern Gray kangaroos in Belconnen and Majura, but the motive is really developers' profit. As grasslands are turned into building sites, as human population growth is encouraged.. Kangaroos are in the way, as is democracy, so both are being buried. See also:Kangaroo articles

The Australian outback town of Mitchell lies in the Western Downs region of southern Queensland on the Warrego Highway just shy of 600 km west of Brisbane on the way to Charleville. Situated on the Maranoa River, the town of Mitchell was named in honour of the 19th Century explorer, and the town emerged as a pastoral town out of the farming of grains, beef and sheep. Tourism has become a strong drawcard to Mitchell and especially to its Great Artesian Spa.

But more recently, Mitchell's fame has been lowered to infamy with it taking on a reputation for becoming the home of the kangaroo slaughter trade.

Australia's Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon MP, has just been handed $26,950,000,000 to unjustifiably escalate Australia's military aggression. This at a time when Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan says the world economy is gripped by the worst recession in 50 years.

Hypocritically at the same time, Fitzgibbon has rejected spending just $3.5 million in order to avoid slaughtering thousands of Australia's grey kangaroos fenced in on Defence land just outside Canberra. Fitzgibbon has condoned the senseless slaughter of 4000 of a population of 9000 trapped kangaroos be shot in secret, just last Saturday, 9th May 2009.

Defence has produced pseudo-science to justify a massive kangaroo slaughter at Majura in Canberra. It is clear that the government only protects human interests and is interested in "managing" wildlife such as kangaroos out of existence, and have their habitat replaced by housing and human structures!

If our governments have their way, kangaroos would be confined to sanctuaries and zoos. Maybe this is the only place our descendants will be able to see our “wildlife”.

ACT Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment, Dr Maxine Cooper, is ACT's inaugural full-time Commissioner in the role, yet what relevant environmental qualifications and experience does the incumbent have, or indeed lack, to be officially condemning another local indigenous popluation of Australia's iconic marsupials, our kangaroos, to slaughter for pet food?

Defence Dept Secretary, Mike Kelly insists there are too many kangaroos at Majura Training Area in Canberra. He wants to kill up to 6,000. He says they are starving and degrading rare grasslands. But there is no proof of either claim and the stats are unreliable. This looks like the same ugly pattern as we saw in Belconnen May 2008...see also ABC video footage (5th one down) of protests today 15 April against Majura killing proposals and attend protest Thursday 16th April in front of Canberra Centre shopping complex at 12 noon.

See also: "Majura demonstration in Canberra" on www.canadianvoiceforanimals.org, "Another Slaughter of kangaroos planned" of 14 Apr 09 on Quaker Concern for Animals web site.

How can the FATE program, ironically acronymed as Future of Australia's Threatened Ecosystems (which is just a fancy way of getting shooters onto farmers' property to commercially shoot kangaroos because they are running out of kangaroos in other areas), have such sloppy population counting methods and expect it to be 'sustainable'?
An FOI report reveals how junk science is driving our national icon to the brink....

There is another drive for a big kill of kangaroos in Majura ACT (in rare-grassland fragments coveted by developers near the new airport). Conventional wisdom is that kangaroo numbers have increased in Australia since European settlement due to cessation of predation by Aborigines and dingoes, as well as increased availability of water. It seems probable, however, that at the time of settlement kangaroo numbers exceeded the present population at least threefold. Dr Giles Auty estimates their pre-1788 number at around 200 million.