The USA Wants to Ban Kangaroo Products and Australians Are, Well, Confused
You know we’re just going to kill those ‘roos anyway, right?
Australia’s odd relationship with Kangaroos
I get it. By the standards of other cultures, Australians have an weird relationship with kangaroos. On one hand, they’re a national icon. They are cute and we are proud to show the world that we have one native animal that doesn’t want to kill you.
On the other hand, once you get away from the towns and cities, they’re pretty much everywhere. They can be dangerous on the roads and be a real pest to farmers with real economic impacts.
And over the last few decades a third view has emerged — that they can be managed with economic benefits and possibly less environmental impact than non-native farm animals.
Australia harvests/culls/kills/murders between 1.5M and 2M kangaroos a year for commercial benefit
Pick your verb.
Meat and leather are the products that come from kangaroos. Apparently some sports-shoe manufacturers have been using that leather in soccer/football shoes. K-leather, as it is known, is awesome stuff for this purpose, but it’s a fair question why it’s necessary in this age of synthetics.
So a bunch of people have been running a campaign to force shoe manufacturers to stop using K-leather under the cute slogan “Kangaroos are not shoes”. According to their site their campaign has a single goal: “to secure a commitment from athletic shoe companies to rid their supply chains of kangaroo skins”.
Their position is that “commercial killing of 2 million kangaroos is the largest land-based slaughter of wildlife on the planet” and a couple of US politicians have taken up the cause, putting forward a bill that would take an existing Californian ban on kangaroo products and make it national.
There seems to be a belief that if shoe manufacturers stop using kangaroo leather, then the kangaroos will not be killed.
It won’t work — it’s not why roos are killed in the first place
The kangaroo industry exists as a by-product of long-established land management practices. It does not exist in response to a market demand, other than the demand it creates from an abundant supply of kangaroo carcasses. However, the industry’s existence creates a regulated framework for the management of an on-going challenge for farmers in Australia.
But before I can explain how all this works, we need deal with some manipulated facts and BS being used on both sides of this debate.
Kangaroos are not endangered
If you come to Australia and see a kangaroo in the wild (and you will) then it is almost certainly one of five major species, of which there are in excess of 45 million hopping around the continent as I write this. Populations vary depending upon climate conditions and was significantly lower 12 years ago during the last major drought, but they have bounced back (pun intended) in recent years.
That said, there are 48 species of macropods in the “kangaroo family” and some are endangered, primarily due to loss of habitat. It is illegal to harm endangered species under any circumstances. They are obviously rare in the wild and, as a tourist, you’re not going to see one outside a zoo.
The 2020 bushfires did not affect kangaroo populations
The 2020 bushfires in Australia were (to use the word-of-the-year for 2020) unprecedented. And in bushfire affected regions, obviously kangaroo populations were impacted. However, suggestion that the bushfires were so widespread that overall population of kangaroos were seriously impacted falls foul of basic geography. Australia is a flipping huge place.
Kangaroo populations do not “explode” during good seasons
The kangaroo industry, and occasionally the Australian Government, has presented the idea that kangaroos populations explode when the climate supports it, creating an issue of overpopulation. This supports the idea that the roo-harvesting industry is part of sound ecological management and somehow a good thing. This is not entirely untrue, but it is stretching the truth.
When territory and feed is available, kangaroos breed quickly and populations grow quickly. However, like most vertebrates, their populations stabilize. Kangaroo biology just does not support the kind of explosive growth and overpopulation that is inferred by the industry and government messaging. Any overpopulation that is being referred to is not relative to the environment, but relative to competing farming interests.
European settlement increased kangaroo populations: unknown
Since European settlement, there is a credible hypothesis that the introduction of irrigation and dams to newly converted pastoral land has led to increased kangaroo populations. Combined with the removal of predators such as dingoes, roo populations grew in many areas of Australia, specifically overlapping with farming interests.
This hypothesis is plausible at a regional level. However, whether this population growth offsets the displacement of roos to make way for towns and cities (and non-pastoral farming land) is strongly debated.
Kangaroos cause damage to farms
Ok, this is where we start to get to the heart of the issue. Being a city-dwelling environmentalist, I have the luxury of not having to wear the cost of many of my opinions. My conviction that all roos should be left alone is fine, but as my brother (who happens to live on a farm) points out, he would carry the cost of that conviction.
Kangaroos damage crops, compete for food and water and cause damage to infrastructure such as fences. There is pressure on farmers to manage kangaroo populations to remain viable.
Is this a real problem? Yes.
Does the kangaroo industry muddy this by playing it up for their own interests? Probably.
How kangaroo management works
All native wildlife is protected in Australia — harming it without permission is illegal. Even snakes are protected. In rural Australia, managing kangaroo populations is an accepted part of life, same as managing, mice, rabbits and foxes (these last two being introduced rather than native). For kangaroos, there are three basic ways this has been done over the years:
Great Grandad’s way — round up your livestock, put them in one paddock while you poison the dam in the other paddock. The roos come down in the evening for a quiet sip of water and bingo, problem solved. It also indiscriminately kills every other animal, fish and bird, but you can just burn the evidence. It’s quick, effective and a completely horrible thing to do to wildlife. It obviously has no place in modern farming, but hey, times were different back then.
Non-commercial shooting — the modern approach — you fill-in some forms for the government explaining your roo problem. They provide you with a permit and a quota (based on your land size and other factors) of kangaroos you can cull. You then grab your rifle and start shooting. Being a carrot farmer, you’re an amateur with a firearm and you’ll probably make a mess of things, but lucky for you, no-one checks how the animals die. Nor are any counts reliably kept, so if you exceed your quota, just burn the evidence.
Commercial shooting — there are designated regions where this is an option. It works the same as above with respect to getting a permit, but this time you engage a licensed kangaroo shooter. The commercial shooter primarily makes money through selling the carcass to an abattoir. But the abattoir can/will only accept a carcass that has been shot in the head, so how the animal dies matters. Records of numbers and locations of kills are maintained and can be checked.
That’s how it’s done. Now I’m guessing there’s a percentage of you who will stop reading at this point and jump straight to the comments to tell me that this is wrong or barbaric or whatever. Good for you, go do that.
An imperfect system
In my opinion, the governance of commercial shooting needs big improvement. By its nature, it is work done by individuals working alone, in isolated areas in the dark and the opportunity for abuse is too great. GPS tracking and body-cameras would help create public confidence that shooters operate to the required standards for their activities. I also advocate quotas be set principally on an assessment of environmental and commercial impact, rather than on estimated kangaroo population size/density.
The real problem
But none of that matters if the commercial shooting option is not available to farmers. Without a commercial option, it’s back to the carrot farmer with his trusty .22.
Which brings us back to the H.R.917 Bill being put forward in the US. Banning kangaroo products in the US will probably damage the kangaroo industry in Australia. And while I’m not a fan of the industry’s political lobbying, the framework provided by the industry and government oversight is both sound (at least in principle) and addresses a genuine rural challenge.
So to our cousins in the USA, I say this. Of course you’re your own nation and you should pass whatever laws you feel fit. I write this because, in Australia, a lot of us who are interested in environmental management are really not sure what problem you’re trying to solve.
If the goal of these laws is to stop sportswear manufacturers using k-leather, then go for it. If the goal is to stop kangaroos being killed, then I doubt it will make the slightest difference.
A bigger problem than the kangaroos
In the end its your choice, but I hope you’re not like us. Here in Australia, we have a huge problem with suburban environmentalists (people like me, I guess), who have political sway in voting numbers, but very little at stake in real environmental management. People like me have already removed ourselves from the environment by living in cities. But we have strong and vocal views about how those remaining on the land should behave, even though we are largely uninformed and the outcome does not directly impact us. I don’t know if that’s true in the US as well, but over here it generally leads to bad outcomes.
Anyway, I’ll finish with a quote (from a US writer!) that over the years has become my mantra for thinking about environmental issues. Perhaps it applies here.
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” — H. L. Mencken
Take care!
