If that is your view Pat, then it is pointless attempting to engage with you, because you have adopted a position based on ideology, and you are completely ignoring facts.

Anyone who has ever worked with wildlife and livestock will tell you the hugely different impacts that livestock have on the ecosystem in comparison to kangaroos. In simple terms, the Australian landscape would be much better off if we farmed kangaroos instead of sheep etc.

But at the moment we do not do so. So harvesting of wild kangaroos is conducted instead. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with the harvesting of wild animals for food etc - or do you think we should stop fishing as well?

And to be quite frank, when you make statements like "... kangaroos couldn't get drink or a feed until we arrived and dug dams and planted grain crops? I don't think so...", then you are just conclusively demonstrating that you have zero interest in facts or rational debate. The building of strawmen is one of the last refuges of the incompetent debater. You can't argue against the alternate case, so you have contructed one that no-one has even used.

The populations of large kangaroos has increased for a number of reasons. They are animals that prefer grasslands to closed forests - and we have changed the landscape to that effect. We have also removed predator controls by restricting the number of dingoes etc.

I strongly suggest that, if you want to be an 'activist', then you need to know what you are talking about first, rather than just producing fallacious strawmen and spouting ad homs against an industry.

Hi again Mike, this is my last comment on this issue. If you talk to real farmers ( and I do a lot) about farming kangaroos they roll around on the ground laughing, its so impractical and so ludicrous. Apart from that, there is no way the broader community are gong to allow our kangaroos to be treated as we now treat domestic cattle and sheep. Live export? Drenching? Breeding manipulation? Transport to abattoirs? Forget kangaroo farming Mike, just leave the poor buggers alone. And by the way, a few hundred, or even a few thousand dingoes in the 1800's, were hardly serious kangaroo predators.

Then once again you are obviously not interested in rational debate and base your opinion on ideology rather than evidence.

Even today, kangaroo populations are regulated by dingo predation, despite the huge decrease in dingo numbers from pest control measures. You should do some reading on the subject. Try these for a start:
http://www.publish.csiro.au/?paper=WR99030
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1442-9993.2009.02022.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false

And you cannot seriously think that there has only ever been a 'few thousand' dingoes in Australia. That is such a silly statement to make that it beggars belief. There are more than that now.

What, did the dingoes all arrive at once in boats or something? They were only camp dogs after all. Goodbye Mike, nice talking to you, Pat

Is it the killing of kangaroos by present methods the source of your objection or would you be opoposed to any attempt at roo farming rather than "hunting"?

See potentially there are great benefits - in a few places that really need them - from a clever well managed sustainable industry like roo farming. Need at lot of open country, some good places to find and cultivate a decent patch of roos and every now and again do a swoop - but humanely, efficiently and safely.

In my view this is an essential option of we are to seriously address "sustainable" agriculture in this country. This would require a very different approach to farming. A "nomadic" sort of farming. More like fishing.... dropping the odd net and taking a scoop.

As to the question of whether there are more or less roos around - depends what and where. People have been manipulating and moving roos around ever since we got here - from broadacre fire-stick farming to wheat. They are opportunists and we are dealing with anything but a balanced ecosystem. Never really have been.

So you'll get localised population explosions some years. Not everywhere ... some just struggle on till the next flood if they're lucky. Other times, a few hundred kilometers or even less away, will be a whole bunch of something else so thick they are bumping into each other.

Now it's that latter bit there that has me intrigued about the potential of this potentially sustainable industry. Given the right conditions, these buggers will outbreed rabbits. You can "run" different species in the same open range. It is an excellent product, potentially. Lots of good economics in there. And good ecological and water outcomes too.

Anyway - something to think about I hope.

I have to say that I am very surprised by the lack of knowledge by most commentators on this matter. I truly did think academics were smarter than what some of these comments have shown.

For instance Mike desperately quotes from the IUCN " use of some wildlife can provide an alternative or supplementary means of productive land-use, and can be consistent with and encourage conservation, where such use is in accordance with appropriate safeguards...", and that: "....Use, if sustainable, can serve human needs on an ongoing basis while contributing to the conservation of biological diversity...."

But there is no evidence anywhere that the kangaroo Industry is ethical, wise and/or sustainable...and its grossly inhumane as well. And it only says sustainable use "can be" not "is"....

Ive been campaigning to protect kangaroos for 30 years, and I've read everything about them that is publicly available, and written much about them, including a book about them. Ive worked with them, cared for them, and spent many hours observing them. I think I know a fair bit about kangaroos.

But the bottom line is for those who support kangaroo farming, its not going to happen. Anytime anyone talks seriously about farming kangaroos, there is a roar of public opposition. Even Gordon Grigg doesn't support it.
It would need massive political support from all parties to change the current Legislation, and that's just not going to happen.

The kangaroo Industry is not there to control kangaroo numbers, its there to make a few dollars for a few people. All State governments now admit that. And last but not least our meat markets demand beef and sheep meat, not kangaroo meat. If we didn't supply what the meat markets want, Sth America or the US would. There are very few overseas markets for kangaroo meat, even Russia won't take it anymore, and nor will China. Just leave the kangaroos alone, they are not pests, they have done very well for many thousands of years without our "management". Just leave them alone.

No Pat - Iagree - the fact trhat Russia just shut down 70% of the export business in one hit shows how "sustainable" the existing wild hunting business is.

But unlesss you are going to argue that we should stick to beef and sheep in changing climate... that kangaroos - being very cute - like deer ... deserved special treatment while we continue to hammer our more fragile ecosystems into oblivion with hoofed ruminants and shrub grazers. It's like running a slasher through the place every year or more.

If you don't like tthe idea of us killing roos for food you're too late! By a good 50,000 years I'd reckon.

Roos like the place. They grew up here. Cows and sheep didn't and they by and large behave like it. We have to keep inseminating them and breeding them and propping up the numbers. Roos on the other hand can explode in local numbers in response to specific conditions. 3 joeys in a good season by all accounts round here.

And so we are condemned to clapping the place out with our chops and hamburgers.

I'm not sure you are addressing these issues.

Why are kangaroos so sacred?

What's wrong with making a few dollars? It is an industry. As for not wanting kangaroo meat, that is relatively easy to change. Australians didn't want seat belts; we wouldn't eat "that wog food"; we were homophobic. Now the road toll is way down, we love sushi and spices, we might even approve of gay marriage. Social change is inevitable if there's a reason to go that way. Equally, there's no reason why a determined Australia could not change international attitudes towards roo meat.

What stands in the way is activism based on ideology and sentimentality, as I see it. Pat's comments are rife with both.

But he is right: Kangaroo farming is probably not going to happen under the current status quo, for both political and practical reasons. Then again, we'd have said the same thing of citizenship and voting rights for Aborigines a few decades ago.

Pat

For someone who claims to have read a lot about kangaroos, and who claims to know a lot about them, your comments reveal a level of ignorance which belies your claims.

Your comments on dingo numbers and predation are just staggeringly ignorant, as are your assertions about changes in population numbers since European settlement.

And your statement on Australians not wanting to eat wildlife- not to put to fine a point on it - foolishness. I had fish for dinner last night. They were delicious. And a lot of my friends eat fish as well - including fish they caught themselves. Are your views about wildlife so ignorant that you don't think that fish are wildlife?

And I had roast kangaroo last week. It was also delicious. I bought it from my local Coles, but I could easily have bought it from the specialist butcher at the Adelaide markets (near to where I work) which specialises in kangaroo products, or from the very popular wild game butcher, also at the markets.

And you know what? I am a very strong conservationist who has a degree in Parks and Wildlife Management, and who works in the rehabilitation of injured and orphaned animals, and volunteer with conservation agencies. And I consider that the eating of kangaroo meat provides much better environmental and animal welfare outcomes than the eating of farmed meat. I - and many of my friends and family - will continue to eat wild harvested food, including kangaroo. I have also eaten possum, wombat, flying fox, snake, emu, crocodile, bogong moths, mud and swimmer crabs, and a host of other Australian wildlife, and will continue to do so.

I did not 'desperately quote from the IUCN'. What I did was point out the blatant lie on the THINKK website, which misquoted the IUCN in order to make an ideological point, which was totally at odds with the facts. And your support for the THINKK position, and your involvement with the Wildlife Protection Association shows that you also do not care about facts and what really is good for wildlife.

You, and people in organisations like that, need to stop thinking of animals in disneyesque terms and have a close look at the real world. Because any policy which totally opposes any harvesting or culling of wildlife, for any reason, is just delusional.

"Kangaroos ARE more abundant than before settlement"

Strong statement indeed from a scientist though in truth nobody knows whether this is correct. In my home state of Western Australia, Prince (1984) came to the conclusion that Western Greys, particularly in the South West region had more than likely reduced in numbers after white settlement due to land clearing. This was accompanied by (perhaps) a slight increase in the population of reds.

You are dead right however about hunting representing artificial predation. Unfortunately though in the natural world dingo predation on kangaroos takes place mainly at the very young or very old stage of the kangaroo life cycle. Shooters however seem to target the biggest and strongest males and females that are in their prime. How you can accept artificial selection replacing natural selection is beyond me.

Me thinks you may be under the spell of Mike Archer