Comments on: Throw another roo on the barbie

By: Geoff Russell

Geoff Russell — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 23:13:15 +0000

Corey and Paul. Kangaroo numbers have crashed with the drought. Here
are the SA stats:

http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/biodiversity/pdfs/kang_harvest_stats.pdf

other states are similar, but I haven’t found such a nice summary table. Its
the funniest looking “super-abundance” I’ve ever seen.

Most hunting restrictions date back to a time when there were no restrictions and
hunters looked like wiping out species. Over time people forget this and think of
restrictions as “barriers to harvesting and eating wild meat”. I don’t know the
kangaroo history, but with ducks the sale of duck meat was as early
as 1928 (in SA) to prevent the wiping out of species. Wildlife provides
so little meat that it
can never be a serious food source. A possum will eat a heap of food and take
12 months to get to the same size as a chicken does in 6 weeks — similarly
with kangaroos.

By: Corey Bradshaw

Corey Bradshaw — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 10:31:04 +0000

Thanks, Paul. I think one thing people who are against eating roo tend to forget is that there are A LOT more of them now that we irrigate the hell out of the closer rangelands. There are many more so-called ‘nuisance’ wildlife incidents simply because we’ve made the land better for them. As such, there is a super-abundance, a non-natural state that exists only because of humans (note that the concept of ‘natural’ is now an utter furphy because we’ll never, ever, have ‘natural’ as long as humans exists at in the densities they do now). So, why don’t we reduce the reliance on cattle, remove the barriers to harvesting and eating wild meat, and generally improve the climate at the same time?

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 01:23:38 +0000

Sadly Corey, in the area around where you live, kangaroos are over abundant and destroying efforts to put back habitat by browsing on seedlings. Landholders are allowed to shoot kangaroos if they get a permit, but are required to leave the carcasses where they fall. They are not allowed to be harvested. This does not make sense. Elsewhere in South Australia kangaroos can be shot and processed for food. Why not close by where the majority of the population live and close to export facilities?