growing population
Shoot or starve? Kangaroo boom presents Australia with a dilemma
Kangaroo numbers have become a serious problem for Australia (stock image)
© Mark Graham/AP/DPA
The kangaroo population in Australia has increased en masse. Now Down Under is faced with a dilemma: If the feed decreases, millions of animals could die. But the population can only be contained if the kangaroos are allowed to be shot.
The kangaroo is the symbol of Australia and the marsupials are protected. But kangaroos are now becoming a problem: plenty of rain and food in recent years have ensured that the animals reproduce in large numbers. If the population is not contained and the food is less, millions of animals could starve to death.
The weather phenomenon La Niña brought copious amounts of precipitation to Australia. “After three years of La Niña on the east coast, we have the perfect growth scenario for kangaroos over the next two years,” predicts Dennis King of the Kangaroo Industry Association. “The reproductive cycle is speeding up.”
As a result of droughts in the early 2000s, the kangaroo population dropped below 30 million, King says. Since then, however, it has recovered and could soon grow to over 60 million.
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If food becomes scarce again after fertile years, this has fatal consequences for the animals: “They eat the toilet paper in public toilets and lie starving on the street,” says Katherine Moseby from experience. “During the last drought, an estimated 80 to 90 percent of kangaroos died in some areas.”
The best way to save kangaroos from this fate is to hunt a part and use their meat and leather, says conservationist Moseby. She advocates treating animals as a resource. “That keeps kangaroo numbers down, so we don’t have any problems during a drought.”
While kangaroos are protected in Australia, the most common species are not threatened with extinction. With a permit, they can be hunted in most parts of the country. Up to five million kangaroos are taken for trade each year.
Animal protection organizations denounce the commercial killing as a “cruel massacre”. They put pressure on the big sporting goods manufacturers like Nike and Puma to stop using kangaroo leather. “Nike divested its only kangaroo leather supplier in 2021 and will no longer make any kangaroo leather products in 2023,” a company spokeswoman said in March.
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In the US state of Oregon, where Nike was founded, lawmakers introduced a bill in early 2023 that would ban the use of “any parts from dead kangaroos”. “These native animals are being slaughtered for commercial profit,” Animals Australia said earlier this year.
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Such campaigns against the kangaroo industry are well intentioned but not effective, warns George Wilson, one of the leading experts on kangaroo populations: “They say it’s unethical to kill the animals. But it’s unethical to let them starve. It would be cruel not to do anything about it.”
Environmentalist Moseby shares this view. “Stopping killing kangaroos for their leather or meat isn’t going to improve the welfare of the animals,” she says. “It will only make things worse.”