Like to get this straight shooter no nonsense reporter doing articles here in North America. Melbourne Herald Sun
Blubbering activists whale about roo cull
By Gary Linnell
May 20, 2008 12:00am
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23728170-5007146,00.html THERE are countless unimaginable cruelties being unleashed around the
world at the moment, and just as many reasons to get angry.
So let's do the numbers.
In China, 50,000 are dead and hundreds of bodies of schoolchildren
remain under rubble after last week's earthquake, many the victims of
corrupt officials and shonky builders.
In Burma, the final death toll may pass 200,000 and more are homeless
and starving because their paranoid and venal militia government
refuses to open its borders to relief efforts.
But folks, reserve all your anger for a local travesty.
Australia, the home of the cruel and inhumane, has embarked on a
massacre already triggering international headlines and condemnation
that will, according to some, forever tarnish our reputation and hurt
our tourism industry.
That's right. Four hundred kangaroos are to be culled just north of
Canberra. The horror, the horror.
Little wonder a coalition of more than 30 animal rights groups has
been gathering in the nation's capital doing its best to whip up a
tide of shame and disgust at the notion that we are slaughtering 400
of our most iconic animals.
"Nobody would seriously think that Australia has any right to
criticise Japan for its whaling while we are killing 3½ million
kangaroos every year for dog food," says Pat O'Brien, the fearless
leader of the National Kangaroo Protection Coalition.
Putting aside the fact that Australia has a growing kangaroo meat
export business with Japan (a Japanese website excitedly promotes the
benefits of kangaroo sushi with chilli, while thousands of tons are
shipped for pet food), O'Brien's passion is sadly not matched by his
numeracy, or his logic.
There are only about 70,000 humpback whales remaining on this planet.
So far, there have been no reported sightings of them braving the
drought and entering the Australian interior to graze on precious land
reserved for livestock.
There are more than 50 million kangaroos in Australia.
Female humpbacks usually breed every two or three years. Gestation
takes more than 11 months.
Kangaroos can breed all year round, and often do. Gestation takes just
over a month. They can increase their populations by up to 400 per
cent in just five years when food and water is plentiful.
Comparing Japan's slaughter of an endangered species with this week's
cull of eastern grey kangaroos by the Defence Department at two of its
properties on the outskirts of Canberra just doesn't make sense. But
in the animal rights world, sometimes the numbers just don't add up.
O'Brien and others have warned that the death of 400 kangaroos will
leave a bloody stain on the national character and impact on the
number of tourists who will want to visit this country in future.
"We are expecting hundreds of people and if they start killing them
we'll be going inside the fence. We will have a 24-hour guard on
them," he has said.
Funny, but there are no reports of animal rights activists gathering
on the Snowy Mountains highway. A few years ago scientists set up a
study along a 20km stretch of that road to examine roadkill levels. In
10 months, 400 eastern greys were found splattered on the bitumen.
You can't say the animal rights groups are naive when it comes to
whipping up publicity. Sir Paul McCartney has been embroiled in the
cause, warning against the potential of a massacre.
Last weekend a former Neighbours star, Fiona Corke, travelled to
Canberra to raise national alarm.
And guess what? That good old script about the whales was served up
yet again. "It is hypocritical that Peter Garrett is running an
anti-whaling campaign and yet is allowing hundreds of kangaroos to be
killed to make room for a housing development," Corke said.
Well, it's not quite like that. There are actually threatened species
hovering on the edge of extinction just outside Canberra, including
unconfirmed sightings of one or two politicians who can keep election
promises.
In lean times, kangaroos threaten their survival, along with
surrounding grasslands. To have moved the 400 kangaroos from defence
land would have cost an estimated $3.5m and, according to one report,
relocation can often be traumatic and inhumane.
There are more than 3m kangaroos harvested in Australia each year.
They contribute to a growing export business that creates jobs and
helps to keep kangaroo numbers at a manageable level.
Of course, kangaroos are cute.
But so are rabbits. And we kill them, too, when their numbers explode
and they start degrading the environment.
There are many things in this world that deserve every ounce of
outrage and anger that we can muster. But worrying about 400 kangaroos
being sedated before getting the bullet is not one of them.
It's called pest control.
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