Calls to halt kangaroo culling after bushfires raze swaths of Victoria’s Grampians
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Australian mainland states permit killing of nearly 5 million annually as part of industry supplying meat and leather products. Wildlife advocates are calling for a halt to the commercial harvesting of kangaroos in Victoria’s Grampians region in the wake of recent bushfires.
Wildlife Victoria warned of “catastrophic and long-term impacts” on native plants and animals due to the fires, which burned through 76,000 hectares of national park and farmland, and called for a stop to the controversial practice until the impact on kangaroo populations could be fully assessed.
While some ecologists agreed, citing the precaution, others supported commercial culling as a strategy to aid the recovery of plants and smaller mammals. Australian mainland states permit the killing of nearly 5 million kangaroos annually as part of an industry that supplies meat and leather products for sale in Australia and for export. The practice was contentious both locally and abroad, with some some US states and sports brands stopping the import and use of kangaroo products.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email. In Victoria, new harvest quotas applied from 1 January, allowing for more than 106,000 grey kangaroos to be culled annually, including more than 32,000 in the Grampians and Barwon south-west harvest zones, which were partly impacted by the recent fires. The state government estimated the population in the two zones was 646,000.
