Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t a happy little debunker; Ask an Aussie if there is anything rare or endangered about Kangaroos, or road pests as we think of them, and most of us would collapse into helpless laughter. But for reasons which are unclear US Congress is set to consider a bipartisan Kangaroo Product ban.
U.S. Lawmakers Introduce Kangaroo Protection Act to Blunt the World’s ‘Largest Wildlife Slaughter’
Congressmen Salud Carbajal and Brian Fitzpatrick Say ‘No More Killing Kangaroos for Athletic Shoes’
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Representatives Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn., this week introduced the Kangaroo Protection Act to ban the sale of kangaroo body parts in the United States. The bill aims to curb the massive trade in kangaroo skins used by Nike, adidas, Puma, and other companies for manufacturing soccer shoes (“cleats”). Though sold throughout the world, the U.S. is the second-largest market, behind only the European Union. Animal Wellness Action, Animal Wellness Foundation, Center for a Humane Economy and SPCA International, the Michelson Center for Public Policy, and others applaud the initiative and call on lawmakers to pass the legislation.
“Nike and other major athletic shoe companies are fueling the world’s largest commercial slaughter of terrestrial wildlife,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. “It’s time for the company to shed kangaroo skins from its product lines and embrace 21st-century sensibilities about wildlife protection.”
“Commercial shooters kill roughly two million wild kangaroos a year to profit from the trade in their skins, despite the availability of alternative fabrics that are of similar or better quality. While California has banned the sale of kangaroo products, enforcement of this inhumane practice is lacking,” said Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif. “I’m proud to stand against kangaroo trafficking and have introduced the Kangaroo Protection Act to make it illegal to exploit kangaroos in the United States and impose penalties for violations.”
“Kangaroos are victims of the largest commercial slaughter of land-based wildlife in the world. As a member of the bipartisan Congressional Animal Protection Caucus and an outspoken defender of animals, I will continue to be committed to ensuring that our government is doing everything in its power to promote and protect animal welfare,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn. “Our bipartisan Kangaroo Protection Act of 2021 will make it illegal to exploit kangaroos in the United States and ensure that penalties are imposed for violations. I am proud to join my colleague Rep. Carbajal in this fight.”
…
Read more: https://centerforahumaneeconomy.org/2021/02/09/us-lawmakers-introduce-kangaroo-protection-act-to-blunt-worlds-largest-wildlife-slaughter/
Culling was not introduced as a commercial activity. Culling was introduced to alleviate suffering, and prevent the utter destruction of the land during dry spells. The following is a video of what happens when kangaroos are not culled, when they run out of food.
From the farmer who shot the video;
…
‘Kangaroos are beautiful animals and an icon of this wonderful region,’ the concerned farmer said.
‘But we are genuinely concerned because if their population levels exceed what the land can naturally sustain, then not only do the kangaroos suffer horribly, but this drought stricken land suffers further too- and this beautiful country will struggle to recover when it finally does rain.’
…
Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3360459/Bizarre-video-shows-kangaroos-avalanching-road-farmer-warns-s-genuinely-concerned-overpopulation.html
Without culling, kangaroos breed like crazy in good years. When the rains fail, a frequent occurrence in arid Australia, kangaroos form vast locust like swarms, eating the ground bare, destroying everything in their path, until the food supply is utterly exhausted. Then millions of them starve to death.
A kangaroo product ban will not stop the cull, because selling kangaroo products is not the reason for the cull. All a kangaroo product ban will achieve is the culled kangaroos will not be converted into useful products.
I wish someone in US Congress would explain why waves of overpopulation followed by the horrible lingering death of millions of kangaroos from starvation, and depriving people of their livelihoods, would be a better outcome than a bit of active land management.
Video of a kangaroo population crash which occurred in 2003. Warning, this video contains distressing images of dead and dying kangaroos.
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All is as predicted 50 years ago by The Prophet Randy Newman, peace be upon him, in the White rap song “Political Science”. For those who are too young to have heard the preaching here are a few lines to tide you over until might search for a full recording.
No one likes us
…
Even our old friends put us down
…
They don’t respect us
…
Asia’s crowded
And Europe’s too old
Africa’s far too hot
And Canada’s too cold
And South America stole our name
Let’s drop the big one
…
We’ll save Australia
Don’t want to hurt no kangaroo
We’ll build an all American amusement park there
They’ve got surfing, too
…
And every city the whole world round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it’ll be
…
Let’s drop the big one now
There are 45,000,000 Kangaroos in Australia at present. A few years ago there were 30 million. There are only 25 million people. During favourable seasons the kangaroo population explodes rapidly and this leads to overconsumption of feed. To use culling reduces the suffering of these starving kangaroos. Using kangaroo meat for food increases the nutritional quality of people’s diets. It also reduces wastage of resources.
If people do not control the numbers of kangaroos by culling humanely, the animals will die of starvation and have horrible deaths.
The proposed American ban on kangaroo exports is misguided and based on ignorance of the real situation like much other recent legislation in the USA.
Maybe the 30,000,000 white tailed deer in the US is the reason? Deer populations have exploded over the past 50 years, far more than before the Europeans came and they cause problems for a lot of other wildlife here. Could be a good substitute for kangaroo. Maybe bring the jobs home!
Deer number are high, but still a fraction of what they were when Europeans arrived, according to estimates by the Wildlife Management Institute. Not many deer in big urban or industrial areas, which take up many thousands of square kms, or miles, if you prefer.
Ironic as kangaroos have been touted by the climate activists because they produce much less methane than cattle and sheep.
So you’d think they’d encourage consumption of roos, not ban it.
The people you speak of are not driven by logic or reason, but a desire to flash their shiny feathers to others as if to say “look at how wonderful I am!”
With all the problems facing the USA, their Congress has time to even consider this idiotic bill? Do you reckon they’ll bother getting anyone with actual knowledge of Australia in to explain the issues?
I mean if California has laws banning use of roo products, surely they KNOW it is stupid?
They may not get around to the ‘roo bill for awhile. Now that Trump has been acquitted of the impeachment charges, the Democrats will probably try to paint him as a Confederate sympathizer, if not outright participant in the Civil War, and forbid him from running for any offices. Hey, somebody has to fill the spots on the low end of the Bell Curve! They can’t all be above average, much as they would like to think that they are.
Now the plan is to paint him with some ancient constitutional amendment from the end of the Civil War, using only a simple majority vote. They just make stuff as they go along.
As Calizuela goes, so goes the nation.
Many more Kangaroos now than in pre-colonisation times (i.e pre 1788). So we have the Chinese killing our wine, seafood and barley export markets, now our great friends in the US want to kill another one of our export markets.
The Us is now run by China.
If aimed at Nike, then I’m all for it, not that I am in the least worried about kangaroos.
Send those pollies a couple of kangaroo steaks – in Australia that is legal.
Yet another perfectly man-made disaster…
Poor old Australia, wtf did it do to deserve such muppet behaviour.
No matter.
The answer is there already = wire-cutters
Quote:
“” The dingo has been the main natural predator of the kangaroo probably since it was introduced to Australia about 4000 years ago.
Prior to that, the main predator was likely to have been the thylacene, the so-called Tasmanian tiger.
The effect of dingo predation is best seen in those areas outside the 2000 km long dog fence that keeps dingos out of agricultural areas.
There are far fewer kangaroos outside the fence, whereas on the dingo-free side the large kangaroo species (Forest Grey and Plains Red) are so numerous that in certain seasons a ‘marsupial lawn’ can be seen on satellite imagery, where the ground vegetation has been trimmed back to almost suburban neatness.””
Maybe a bit brutal and especially as the Dingoes are a non-native species.
So we’re left with, what became of the tigers?
Both dingo and tiger would control that other non-native scourge of Australia and everywhere: sheep
Sheep and their close cousins goats, Create Deserts.
Just like the roos with their little nib-nib-nibbling teeth
Wherefore art thou ‘RGB of Duke‘ ## – you were not any fan of goats. None. At. All.
## I have got the exact handle wrong but t’was certainly something like that
And why they ever try to grow wheat in Aus is quite unfathomable.
What gives, everywhere you look it’s a loony bin
And if you demonstrate any aptitude at ‘Non-Loonyness’, you are summarily cancelled
surreal & bizarre in equal measure
If the nearest thing we have to a natural predator of Roos – apart from humans, that is – are canines, then the most appropriate biological control for Roos would be what was known for over a century as “Kangaroo Dogs”. Large, smooth coated greyhound crosses.
I seriously doubt that Roos hold some kind of religious or philosophical preference for being killed by a particular kind of dogs.
Must admit, I’ve tried ‘roo a few times.
Just can’t get exited about the taste, a bit “gamey” or something.
you can soak it in milk or water for while
roo fillets pan fry like fillet steak but casseroles are also ideal to lessen that heavier flavour bay leaves n herbs etc
roo tail soups as good as oxtail
We eat the wheat and drink the barley and feed the hay to tasty animals and share it around the world dude. Grapes help wash it down too. You don’t like then stick to your meal worms bugs and bottled water. The copious roos are a spinoff from that drinking from water troughs and muscling in on the action whilst keeping our comprehensive car insurance premiums high and feeding the crows. You have something against crow welfare because we can manage the insurance premiums and all the rest.
Peta is, of course, ridiculous. Calling us “loonies” while demonstrating zero understanding of the variability of the Australian climate soil type and vegetation.
Australia is not all desert. Australia has one of the most advanced dry land cropping industries in the world. The average annual rainfall where I live and farm is 25”. Why would I not grow wheat?
The “Loony Bin” would be a fine place for those who think that I would willingly and without regard, destroy my asset and income by acting unreasonably. But we hear a lot of this from urbanites whose primary contact with animals, farming and nature is from behind sterile glass screens.
I miss RGB at Duke. One of the most intelligent of a generally savvy lot.
we have excellent land for wheat in non drought times thanks.
and Dingos running loose would also kill those koalas wombats and all the other ground dwelling rare species
this time Peta you really shoulda STFU
you know zip re aussie lands or species
You’re not a true Australian until you’ve hit a kangaroo driving
And some of those kangaroos are very bad drivers.
A slap on the paw isn’t punishment enough, I say.
Wombats don’t do much for a car’s suspension, either !
Trouble with roos, is they jump, which can mean they can come through the windscreen !
Driver of this truck didn’t survive.
I almost smacked head on into a big red a couple of years ago, thankfully it jumped one way, I swerved the other, so just a little fender damage. Never forget the look on its face.
interesting thing Ive noted here in Vic
we have a LOT of the blacktailed wallabies
you dont see many of them as roadkill
whynot?
Ive watched them turn their backs to the headlights while sitting on road edges so they dont get lightblinded and theyre smarter n stay on sides until its clear
the red n grey buggers just jump regardless
ive avoided em and then had them rebound into the side of the car when they should have been safely passed(at my risk)
These people (US Cong) are not the sharpest knives in the drawer. One of them (a Dim-o-crat), Rep. Hank Johnson, said he thought stationing more Marines on Guam might make it “become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.”
Yep, poor old Hank had his own interpretation of that “tipping point” that all his Dembo colleagues were pontificating about.
If the US insists in interfering in Aussie affairs, the Aussie govt should send them all to USA as “refugees”, then they’d be taken in with open arms, fed and looked after. Problem solved.
They should be harvested for skins and meat. That would at least mean a quick death rather than dying a lingering death of thirst and starvation.
As usual supposedly “well-meaning” liberal ideas pulled from the air end up causing more harm than doing nothing. But they don’t care about reality of what they are doing, it’s all about virtue signalling, not real world outcomes.
Great profile photo of a roo’s nutsack, there.
Mature males will often pose against the sky line like that just to impress the females !
In all of Western politics strong emotion has been replacing weak reason, a sad spectacle.
Roo bars are mounted on the front of vehicles for protection – it’s a big business. https://www.irvinbullbars.com.au/roobar/watch-out-for-that-kangaroo-why-wa-drivers-need-to-fit-a-roo-bar-to-their-vehicle/
Shouldn’t that be: Kangaroo Congress considers US product ban?
SW Vic theyre thick on the ground here. car damage alone is massive. fencves and crops damage also. state govt is JUST allowing shoot for human and have been “trialling” petfood use for 5yrs and might…approve expanding tallies
there a mob of around 15 that hop around our town at night, gardens get trimmed for free here. they drive my dogs nuts! im planning 6ft deerwire around my 7 acres to keep the mongrels OUT
It seems as though ever since Trump Derangement Syndrome took a hold in America, democrat lawmakers have lost their capacity to think, to verify and to apply commonsense and logic.
The Planet of the Roos was the working title of a movie about a species that rose up and conquered humanity, enslaving the now dumb (as in unspeaking) humans. Until a mysterious space craft that had traveled through some sort of time portal crash landed and the smart humans aboard were befriended by some scientist roos who realized they could talk and took pity on the last survivor. I wonder whatever happened with that project?
Kangaroo leather has unusual properties in that it is incredibly hard wearing and soft. Hard wearing leathers are usually very hard and rigid, whilst most soft pliable leathers have little resistance to wear
Years ago the US Congress outlawed the slaughter of horses for meat. Immediately tens of thousands of horses became worthless.
Did we need any more proof that politicians in the USA are bloody idiots? It would be interesting to get insurance stats of the cost of cars hitting these bloody things. I did severe damage to one 4WD on the way to work one morning; despite it having a roo bar. Another time I stupidly nearly ran off the road trying to avoid one. They are a major pest. Nike, etc can have as many roo skins as they like.
Roo burgers are delicious.
I have found that most environmentalists don’t actually know how the environment works.
“I wish someone in US Congress would explain why waves of overpopulation followed by the horrible lingering death of millions of kangaroos from starvation, and depriving people of their livelihoods, would be a better outcome than a bit of active land management.”
Because it makes them feel good about themselves for “doing something” – doesn’t matter what the actual result is.