Killing by rural leaseholders
While a core focus of Save Canberra’s Kangaroos’ work is to stop the ACT Government’s annual killing program, little known to the public is the scale of killing undertaken by landholders across the country, including here in the ACT. Kangaroos are the victims of the largest land-based wild animal slaughter in the world. Millions of kangaroos are slaughtered by farmers every year in Australia because they are perceived to compete for pasture on land that has been cleared of kangaroo habitat to provide paddocks for the introduced sheep and cattle. According to the report from the Humane World for Animals, License to kill, rural leaseholders were permitted to kill 45,575 kangaroos across ACT from 2021 to 2023. The actual reported number of kangaroos killed for this period was 24,462.
More to come on this page soon…
While there is some monitoring and public reporting of the ACT Government’s killing program, there is next to zero monitoring or checks completed for the killing of kangaroos by rural leaseholders. As already mentioned, the killing of kangaroos undertaken by rural leaseholders is far larger in scale than the ACT Government’s killing program yet it lacks the independent oversight applied to it. Without external scrutiny, there is no assurance that rural shooting practices meet even the bare minimum animal welfare standards outlined in the National Code.
Another aspect of the killing by rural leaseholders is the provision they must adhere to during certain months, where they are only permitted to kill male kangaroos. However the breakdown of male and female kangaroos is never reported, like it is for the ACT Government’s killing program, meaning we can never be sure whether there are female kangaroos and their joeys being either intentionally or unintentionally killed during this period.
To ensure that all kangaroo shooting in the ACT is undertaken in accordance with current animal welfare standards, independent veterinary audits must also be conducted for the killing of kangaroos by rural leaseholders, at intervals equivalent to those applied to the the ACT Government’s killing program. Anything less undermines transparency and public confidence.
If the ACT Government wishes to genuinely claim a commitment to timely and transparent reporting, then the data for the annual killing by rural leaseholders must be:
- Published annually, immediately following the conclusion of the culling season, in the same way as the ACT Government killing program.
- Made publicly available on the ACT Government website, in a prominent and accessible location, in the same way as the ACT Government killing program.
- Presented in a clear, accessible format so that the community can fully understand the extent of Buru killing on rural land.
To our knowledge, it appears that there is no requirement for rural landholders to report how many joeys they kill. This is wholly unacceptable and must be a requirement so that the public can be aware of the true number of kangaroos being killed by rural landholders. The sheer scale of the number of joeys being ripped from their dead mother’s pouches and either bashed to death or decapitated should be acknowledged and reported.