A ‘new’ notion
Natural, Environmentally Wise and Responsible, the Journal of the Australian Kangaroo Industry,
Number 51, September 2008.
Animal Liberation groups have recently trundled out a new notion in their increasingly desperate attempts to denigrate the kangaroo industry. This one rates up there with their all-time greats of mumbo gumbo. Past efforts include, ‘The kangaroo harvest reduces the gene pool’, ‘The red kangaroo will be extinct within 2 years’ and more recently, ‘Prior to European settlement, there were 200 million kangaroos’ (Who done the survey we ask?). The latest is ‘Kangaroo are now quasi-extinct across much of the rangeland’.
‘Quasi extinct?’ I hear you ask, ‘What the hell does that mean’?
I asked myself the same question. The termed was used by a Murray Darling Basin Commission funded project looking at issues of kangaroo management, which this ‘report’ cites.
This latest ‘report’ tell us in ‘quasi-scientific’ (If they can use it, why can’t we?) certainty that:
‘Red Kangaroos are quasi-extinct across 92% of South Australia’
And
‘Wallaroos are quasi-extinct across 86% of Qld’
And that
‘Grey Kangaroos are quasi-extinct across 36% of NSW’
And lots more along a similar vein. Scary stuff, if it meant anything. It’s sparked a new rash of protest with letters sent to Adidas and such. But let’s try to sort out what it really means.
Now, the people from the NSW Department of Agriculture who conducted the aforesaid study in which the phrase was used and which this latest ‘quasi-scientifc’ report cites widely, comment that “Quasi-extinction is an arbitrarily set level that has no direct biological meaning - it is useful for comparison purposes, but it can’t be interpreted directly.”
Another commentator, Dr Tony Pople of Qld University comments, “Quasi-extinction is a widely misunderstood and misused term. It is a subjective term, based on criteria established by the user. It indicates an aesthetic threshold, set at 2 kangaroos per square kilometre. An ecological threshold at which kangaroo populations may be in conservation danger would be much lower.
The density for quasi-extinction is arbitrary. Modelling studies use it simply to calculate the risks of a population falling to a particular low density that may be socially unacceptable or below which the harvest is commercially unviable.”
So it really means kangaroo numbers have been reduced to a low arbitrary levels, by drought in this case, nothing more. And from which they have in many cases past recovered, that’s what roos are adapted to!
The latest version of Natural, Environmentally Wise and Responsible is now available online.
Visit http://www.kangaroo-industry.asn.au/news/news_frame.htm
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