AUSTRALIA-CULLING KANGAROOS.
The ACT Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment has warned a large number of kangaroos must be urgently culled as growing populations jeopardise the survival of threatened grasslands.
Maxine Cooper said landholders must take action to control growing populations of eastern grey kangaroos to protect the grasslands, some of which were in a ’’critical condition’’.
’’From a grasslands perspective, some sites are in such critical condition, you would be doing everything you possibly can to protect those sites now,’’ Dr Cooper said.
’’We are now facing the harsh reality of being the bush capital and that is, we have to manage kangaroos.
’’On advice from experts that I’ve had, the only humane way to reduce large numbers of kangaroos is through humanely culling..’’
Natural temperate grasslands are one of the ACT’s most threatened ecosystems and they are home to threatened species such as the grassland earless dragon and the golden sun moth.
Dr Cooper said only 5 per cent of the estimated area that existed in the ACT before European settlement remained today.
She said other threatening processes such as drought were impacting on the sites, but kangaroos were compounding the problem..
If kangaroo populations were not managed, the animals’ overgrazing could cause the demise of other species.
’’I really am a passionate animal lover, so really for me it’s both personally and professionally a harsh reality. It’s not something that you advocate in any way lightly,’’ she said.
In the 2007-08 State of the Environment Report, Dr Cooper reported rangers picked up about 1000 kangaroos from roadsides as a result of vehicle collisions across the territory each year.
She estimated kangaroos cost between $5million and $7million as a result of those collisions.
’’It’s really up to the land managers to take action, and that’s where I think it has to sit,’’ Dr Cooper said.
’’We want the kangaroos as part of the ecosystem, but because they no longer have any natural predators, hunting of them has been reduced and the area on which kangaroos used to graze has been taken up by urban development.
"You actually have to have the human in there as one of the predators and control the numbers of kangaroos.’’
The ACT’s approved kangaroo shooting season takes place between March and July.
Each season, between 3000 and 7500 kangaroos in the territory are killed under ACT Government licences.
The Territory and Municipal Services director of Parks, Conservation and Lands, Russell Watkinson, said surveys of kangaroo populations in upland areas such as Namadgi and Tidbinbilla showed numbers were high but stable. In lowland urban areas, they had found a trend of increasing populations.
The draft kangaroo management plan is likely to be out for consultation next month.
The department was also carrying out research on fertility control.
Wildcare president Greg Tarlinton said he agreed kangaroo populations needed to be looked at, but he did not agree with ’’indiscriminate killing’’.
’’We would like to see more non-lethal methods,’’ he said.
Mr Tarlinton said landholders needed to take action earlier with kangaroos, before populations reached crisis point and threatened ecosystems.