Source: The High North publication, "The International Harpoon," July 3, 2000, published during the 52nd Annual Meeting of the International Whaling Commission held in Australia

Australian Environmental Minister Robert Hill has a special talent for separating issues when it comes to wildlife management. Whales are “magnificent”, “majestic”, “beautiful and graceful” and “should be able to live freely without the threat of being hunted.” But in no way does he let such romantic notions come between himself and kangaroos.

Actually, it’s difficult to be sure how Hill feels about kangaroos, since he never speaks of them. But we do know what he does to them. For the year 2000 alone, he has passed death sentences on some 5.7 million kangaroos. We can assume also that he has no interest in how efficiently or humanely his execution order is carried out since there is no government monitoring or statistical record of the quality of the hunt.

Winning the Extinction Race

In the short time since the Anglo-Saxons colonised Australia, seven kangaroo species have become extinct, while at least 12 others are now seriously threatened. “We have already ‘won’ the mammal extinction race, with 50% of all mammal losses in the last 200 years having occurred in Australia ... over 70% of our land has been highly modified through agricultural use, ecosystems are threatened by overuse,” writes WWF Australia in its 1999 annual report.

Another report last year from WWF, on the conservation of native grassland, informs us that in all lowland regions of south-eastern Australia, the natural grassy ecosystems have either been eliminated or reduced to isolated pockets. “It appears certain that the existing threats to native grassland communities will continue and are likely to increase,” the report warns.

The biggest threat facing kangaroos is “habitat clearance” and not hunts, says one of Hill’s men, Gerry Maynes, Director of the Ministry’s Wildlife and Legislation Section, to The International Harpoon. Still, “thousands of hectares of new crops and pastures are being established in regions that contain the last remnants of native grassland with the support and encouragement of governments and industry groups,” claims WWF.

Fortunately, humans are not invading the marine habitat of whales in the same way they are invading kangaroos’ terrestrial habitat. And this is may be the main reason why humans have never driven a whale species to extinction, despite their best efforts. Although a generalisation, it is valid to say that the conservation status of marine species is far better overall than for terrestrial species.

Leading the World

In view of this, shouldn’t we expect Hill to focus his conservation efforts on the threats to Australia’s terrestrial species? After all, “Our country leads the world in having the most threatened reptiles and frogs,” challenges the WWF in its annual report.

But no. Hill’s focus is firmly on whales. “Australia is again leading the world in efforts to protect these magnificent creatures,” Hill stated in a recent speech to foreign correspondents. Searching for the phrase “whales” at the section for speeches and press releases at the Ministry’s website, we get a list of 58 articles, 11 of which have the word “whales” in their headings. But a search for “kangaroos” flushes out just 17 articles, none of which addresses kangaroo management or even has the word “kangaroos” in the title. Many of them popped up because they mentioned geographical names containing “kangaroo”. And Hill cannot claim forgetfulness when it comes to kangaroos. It is kangaroos, not whales, that feature prominently on his Ministry’s letterhead.  

Popularity Contest

Saving wildlife should not become “a popularity contest”, warned Hill in a 1996 media release, expressing the fear that “we could become too focussed on saving majestic creatures such as the Blue Whale or cute or cuddly creatures such as the Bilby” to the detriment of the less glamorous Ghost Bat, Mallee Fowl and Broad-headed Snake.

Here Hill’s ability to separate two issues reaches unprecedented heights. When arguing on behalf of bats, fowl and snakes, he argues that whales should not be put on a pedestal. But when arguing on behalf of whales, he describes them as “magnificent”, “majestic”, “beautiful and graceful”. A search of Hill’s speeches and press releases turns up even fewer on snakes, bats and fowls than it does on kangaroos. Those 58 articles still place “the majestic whale” firmly at the top of the heap.

No Humane Way to Kill?

“There is no humane way to kill a whale,” Hill assures us, without defining or providing criteria for judging a humane hunt. There does exist, however, a mountain of statistics on just this subject from the Norwegian and Japanese hunts.

So how about kangaroos? Does a humane method exist for killing them? This question is far harder to answer as Hill –who has now been responsible for these kills for over 5 years –has not cared to provide any documentation on the killing quality. “We don’t have data on the time to death or on the number of wounded animals,” admits Maynes.

An inspection of kangaroo carcasses in 1985 by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) found that at least 15% of the animals “died inhumanely”. And then there are the wounded animals that escape in the dark, never to be inspected. (Hunts are con-ducted at night from the back of vans using floodlights.)

Maynes admits that the Ministry has no idea how many animals are wounded and escape. In the absence of any documentation, Maynes is still quite sure that “most animals are dead before they hit the ground.” The reasoning behind this assumption is that the hunt as an economic enter-prise is characterised by “high volume, low value.” “Profit mar-gins are so thin” that the hunters “can’t afford to miss animals,” says Maynes. Bullets are so ex-pensive, he contends, that hunters who can’t shoot straight are unable to stay in business. Whaling, by contrast, is “low volume, high value”, he says, implying that whalers can afford to miss. Ironically, his argumentation is an echo of arguments used by Norwegian whalers. One shot with a penthrite grenade costs more than US$470.

The real contrast between the two hunts is that every Norwegian whaling boat has an inspector aboard to ensure that the humane killing code is respected. Shots should be fired only when a whale’s flank is exposed, and from a range of no more than 30 meters. In the kangaroo hunt there are no inspectors, says Maynes.

Joeys Starving to Death

In whaling, it is strictly forbid-den to kill a mother accompanied by a calf. In the kangaroo hunt the small “joeys” are torn out of their dead mothers’ pouches and killed. But what if the joey is out on his own while his mother gets the fatal bullet? As many as 1 million larger joeys may escape only to die later, claims the animal welfare organisation, Animals Australia.

There exist “no direct field studies” on the number of joeys that are out of the pouch during the hunt, admits Maynes. He can’t grant that it does not happen and offers a long and speculative lecture on the probabilities of survival for a joey without its mother at different ages and under different circumstances.

Exact Counts : A Waste of Time

In the International Whaling Commission, Australia has been one of the most outspoken advocates for having exact population estimates before hunting quotas can be set. The Revised Management Procedure contains mechanisms that reduce the number of animals that can be hunted as the uncertainty surrounding a stock estimate in-creases, and requires that estimates be based on regular counting surveys.

“Yes and no,” answers Maynes to the question of whether there exist good population estimates for the kangaroo stocks hunted. For the majority of species there exist only “broad estimates”. He goes on to say that it is “not interesting” to know exactly how many animals there are. What “wildlife managers” emphasise is “the long term monitoring” and “trends in populations rather than the exact count.”

“Wildlife managers might choose to waste a lot of time to get exact counts,” Maynes says. The usual annual quota in the kangaroo hunt is 15-20% of the estimated population. In the Norwegian and Japanese whale hunt it is far less than 1%.

Pest Animals

The most frequently cited justification for the kangaroo hunt has been the notion that kangaroos compete with sheep for precious grassland. As late as 1990, over 60% of the kangaroo harvest in Queensland was for the skin only. Most of the carcasses were simply dumped. Since then the Australian government has, with quite some success, launched a program for the “sustainable utilisation” of kangaroo stocks and most of the meat is now sold at market. But the need to “address damage mitigation concerns” is still an important part of kangaroo management policy, says Maynes.

One of the objections to the hunt by Australian animal protection groups is that this damage has not been sufficiently document-ed. According to the Australian Wildlife Protection Council, “the kangaroo has been made scapegoat for land and economic mismanagement.”

“Various bits and pieces of work have been done” on the competition between sheep and kangaroos, but it is all “rather patchy”, says Maynes. He agrees that the main problem of the management of the grassland is not too many kangaroos but rather over-grazing by sheep and cattle. In also stressing the marginal economic benefits of the hunt, Maynes makes it a bit difficult for outsiders to understand just why several million kangaroos have to be shot (or for the young ones, decapitated) every year.

No Need

But the need for whaling is easy to assess, in Hill’s mind. “There is simply no need to harvest these beautiful and graceful animals,” he states.

In making this dogmatic and sweeping statement, he totally fails to take account of the cultural and subsistence needs of indigenous peoples who have a tradition of harvesting marine mammals. This is unfortunate, as Australia’s official policy is to recognise these needs as ad-dressed in the IWC Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling Scheme.

In his assessment of the need for whaling, Hill has not consulted those people whose income and culture depend on this enterprise. “We firmly believe that the people who live in a community, a catchment or a region, are central to any efforts to improve management of natural resources and to manage change,” he pointed out in an address to the National Farmers Federation. But when it comes to the people living in the High North he ascribes them no role at all in the management of the natural re-sources in their icy waters.

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