Defence sets out ‘roo kill schedule
Canberra Times, Page: 4. Friday, 7 March, 2008
The Department of Defence will begin culling more than 400 eastern grey kangaroos at its Belconnen site within two weeks, after the ACT Government refused permission to move the animals.
Defence spokesman Brigadier Andrew Nikolic said shooting the kangaroos was ruled out by the Australian Federal Police on safety grounds due to the proximity of houses and roads. Instead, the kangaroos will be darted with a tranquilliser then killed by lethal injection. The cull will cost $320,000 and require two vets, a professional dart-gun operator, an ecologist and animal welfare observers.
Leading kangaroo ecologists say the cull is a wasted opportunity to conduct important research on wildlife fertility control and improved methods of relocating naive species from urban areas.
University of NSW arid zone research director David Croft accused the ACT Government of “being bloody minded” and attempting to set a precedent for commercial kangaroo harvesting across the ACT.
Brigadier Nikolic said the cull would be completed by April, with carcasses stored on site in a refrigerated container but he could not confirm if these would subsequently be sold for pet food or taken away to be buried.
“That will be a matter for the contractor who carries out the cull,” he said.
Wildlife Protection Association president Pat O’Brien said news of the cull “was already posted on websites around the world” and would affect tourism in the ACT.
“We can promise Canberra will see serious protest action. There is a lot of public anger over this decision by the ACT Government because the killing is unnecessary. The kangaroos are on Commonwealth land, which belongs to the people of Australia, and Defence could have overruled the ACT but chose to roll over.” Defence deferred plans last August to cull kangaroos at the Belconnen Naval Transmission Station site after public protest. It agreed to consider a plan by Queanbeyan Wildcare to translocate the animals under scientific supervision, but this was scuppered last week when the ACT Government refused to issue export permits to move the kangaroos into NSW.
Chief Minister Jon Stanhope issued a report yesterday by ACT Environment Commissioner Maxine Cooper on the ecological impacts of kangaroos at the Belconnen site. He said the report proved kangaroos should be “removed immediately” to protect the grassland values and “to achieve a stocking rate of one kangaroo per hectare or less”. This would leave 100 kangaroos which will be used by the ACT Government to continue fertility control experiments.
Mr Stanhope said experts advising Dr Cooper “considered various options including translocation” but concluded it was not the most humane approach.
Former Queanbeyan Wildcare president Professor Steve Garlick said moving kangaroos was now commonplace.
“As someone who has translocated up to 15 kangaroos including large ones in one day with simply the right medication and right destination facilities, its easy to see that a team of people would have little difficulty in moving greater numbers over a period of time.” Dr Croft said the translocation program would have allowed scientists to test methods to be applied to moving threatened species.
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