Non-Commercial Roo Cull: Wasteful & Disrespectful

Once again the issue of culling kangaroos has come to the fore of the media, particularly in Canberra, but the truth is that following the conversion of much of the landscape to grazing and cropping country, in a good seasons this practice is repeated time and time again across NSW as populations of Eastern Greys reach levels that cause damage to primary producers.

The ACT Civil & Administrative Tribunal (ACAT) set an annual quota for 2013 of 1244 kangaroos; the reaction was considerable particularly from the animal welfare and green groups. But the truth is that some properties in isolation can be granted this many tags for their annual cull such is the problem with excess populations of eastern grey kangaroos.

The science behind the culling of native animal populations is fairly well settled: our understanding of the population, their response to stress and the "excess" is now well known and gone are the days of an all out declaration on them - thank heavens for that! The fact that we're back every year culling again suggests that the overall impact is not of any great detriment to the population.

But what this little piece is about is what happens to them following the cull.



Now kangaroo meat is widely regarded (ironically less so in Australia) as a valuable source of rich protein; it is low in fat and has other anti-carcinogenic and anti-diabetes properties (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_meat#Products).

It is also widely held as an ecologically superior product to domesticated livestock with kangaroos being vastly superior in their adaptation to the Australian landscape, performing better during droughts, limiting the damage to root systems of native pastures and leading to much less erosion and siltation of waterways.

 All in all, kangaroo is a very valuable natural resource.

In NSW, non-commercial culling of macropods (the dominant being eastern grey kangaroos) is governed by the National Parks and Wildlife Act. A landholder makes an application to the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service; a staff member makes a determination and issues the appropriate number of tags. In my experience and the experience of those I've talked to in the past is that the local NPWS rangers are often very friendly, easy to get along with and are sympathetic to the farmers' plight.

So what's the problem?

Well the problem arises when one tries to put all that wonderful protein to use. You see the overwhelming majority of permits prohibit the carcasses being removed from the property.

This has two major problems: the waste of protein and the increased food available to feral carnivores and omnivores.

Following the ACT cull this year, the former issue was raised in the mainstream media (Dumped Roos Seen as Waste of Protein). Unfortunately it never amounted to any real interest among the public, despite the waste of something in the order of 28,000kg of rich protein.

In this case, the concerns of Territory and Municipal Services Minister Shane Rattenbury are valid; with a commercial enterprise in place the investors would want to see a return on their investment and this may mount undue pressure on the annual quota, particularly in a dry or run of dry years. But to dismiss any use of the meat for human consumption on the grounds of these concerns is, to put it bluntly, a soft option; it's a cop out.

If we look to similar programs around the world, the United States sets the standard with their Sportsmen Against Hunger program. This program enables hunters to donate game meat to be used for feeding the disadvantaged within their communities. In 2010 they donated enough meat to generate 1.9 million meals.

Why can't this be replicated in Australia? With hundreds of thousands of kangaroos culled annually we are not short of protein. Instead though they are left to rot in paddocks, providing a temporary food source for destructive pest animals such as wild dogs and feral pigs who then turn on native wildlife and stock to supplement their feed once the glut of prime kangaroo is spent.

It is an incredible waste and an act of despicable disrespect. It's a valuable resource that could contribute to improving the lives of our fellow man, why not use it?

The Greens: Champions of the Wasteful & Disrespectful Destruction of Animals

So in my blog The Greens and the Pursuit of Ideology I went through some of the issues that challenge the Greens due to their dogmatic pursuit of their chosen ideology.

Well yesterday, late in the evening, another one to add to the list came to light.

Greens federal election candidate Scott Campbell-Smith  has admitted that he hunts deer... sorry, that should be he shoots deer on his property.

According to the article on the Weekly Times website (Greens deer hunt admission), Mr Campbell-Smith has deemed the deer to be a pest on his property. The article doesn't outline the damage the deer cause, and being only a few acres, one could reasonably assume that his losses, whatever they are, aren't exactly financially draining; it is far more likely to be the odd backyard vege or rose bush getting a flogging.

Now the Greens have, as one of their aims, "A ban on recreational shooting of all animals, including Australian native water birds". There are no misgivings about their intent with this one: they want to see the end of hunting in Australia, not just on public land, National Parks, State Forests etc, but across all land tenures.

So it has to be asked, does Mr Campbell-Smith's actions fly in the face of one of his party's core aims?

Well not according to him it doesn't.

As I alluded to above, the Greens aren't so naive as to not support the control of pest animals and in this regard they believe that shooting pest animals - by professionals I might add - is acceptable. Mr Campbell-Smith has deemed the deer on his property to be a pest so his actions fall within the party policy, sans professional.

But what is the difference between recreational hunting and pest animal control when undertaken by the landholder or an agent of the landholder (i.e. not a 'professional')?

From what I can gather, the main point of difference is actually pretty simple: when undertaking pest animal control, the animals killed are left to rot in the paddock, or to become a food source for other pest animals - foxes, wild dogs and pigs. When recreational hunting though, it is incumbent upon the hunter to use as much of that animals as possible - the meat and the pelt of course being the two most common resources.

Not only is there the moral obligation to use whatever one can from an animal harvested from the wild, it is also a sign of respect of the quarry that their life - regardless of whether it is deemed to be a pest or not - be of value in the end. To simply shoot an animal and leave it to rot when its meat could be harvested is grossly disrespectful.

We can go even further though and glean from the recent events that the Greens aren't just about the abolition of recreational hunting, but are indeed about the abolition of the right of an individual to feed themselves and their family from the land, even when their quarry is an introduced species!!!

So, is this really what the Greens stand for, the wasteful, disrespectful destruction of animals? And more shockingly the revocation of the right of an individual to feed themselves and their family with meat harvested from the landscape?

The Greens and the Pursuit of Ideology

In basing a political party on a set of political ideologies, the Greens are not unique. It is true that many of our choices of political parties have, deep in their foundations, an ideology which molds and shapes their approach to policy and power. 

Quite aptly, Wikipedia includes in its explanation of political ideologies, among other things, doctrines and myths. Quite apt because this is largely what sets the Greens apart from other mainstream political parties.

The other aspect that sets them apart is their dogged and unwavering pursuit of these ideologies, so unwavering we could quite accurately describe their approach as utopian - from their perspective at least this is the case.

 The birth of the Greens was quite noble; deep in the Tasmanian wilderness a few brave men and women fought hard for the environment, in this regard they weren't too dissimilar to the hunters that fought hard to save the Macquarie Marshes and other wetlands in NSW in the face of the threat of drainage for agriculture. It is a great shame that these die-hard environmentalists, while not perfect, have seen their party overrun with modern extreme leftards whose heads are airily found in a utopian ideal. They cannot compromise, they cannot foresee the impact of their agendas and most of all, they are so far entrenched in a dogmatic ideology that they represent the greatest threat to the freedoms of the Australian people.

The problem with this dogma is that it often sees the sacrifice of pragmatism and compromise in the pursuit of solutions and the shaping of policy.

For example take the very first attempt at an emissions trading scheme in Australia, the Rudd Governments Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) in 2008. From the outset, because it didn't meet the utopian ideals of the Greens, they rejected it. Despite it being a big step forward in Australian energy policy and its response to anthropogenic global warming (AGW), the Greens rejected it and called for even more ambitious targets.

Because of their pursuit of the ideal position, it was four years before a new scheme was introduced and in actual fact there was bugger all difference, in terms of achievements to tackle AGW. This was four years the slightly less ideal scheme could have been in force, stoking R&D in renewable and clean energy. It is highly unlikely that the Greens resistance to the CPRS gained anything for the environment and almost entirely certain that it cost.

A more recent example has been the abolition of the Game Council and the suspension of hunting in State Forests in NSW.

The Greens have made it no secret that they wanted the figurative head of the Game Council on one of the iron spikes on Macquarie Street. They have been nothing short of continuous in their hounding of the Game Council and volunteer recreational and conservation hunters since its inception in 2006. With the news of the decision to abolish the Game Council and suspend hunting in all State Forests braking, the Greens were practically orgasmic in receiving and retransmitting the news with slogans such as "We did it! Game Council abolished".

Now I'm not about to suggest that hunting should be celebrated by everyone; far from it for me to tell others how to think, how to source their meat or how to contribute to the conservation movement - I'll leave that to the Greens - but what I do expect is that while ever my own pursuits are conducted within the law and are not impacting detrimentally on others, I will not be vilified for it. However, the unrelenting and dogged pursuit of volunteer conservation and recreational hunters by the Greens and their followers, in the name of environmental ideology, has been the exact opposite.

Their campaign was so hysterical and so venomous they whipped up vicious, vilifying antics by their sheeple (people exhibiting the characteristics of sheep i.e. they follow without question). There were instances of graffiti on prominent hunters' private property, hate mail and derogatory, almost defamatory material spread across the internet.

All of this behaviour aside, where the Greens have spectacularly failed is in addressing the actual problem. And at that, it is an issue that plagues their flagship cause: conservation and the environment.

Because of their ideological pursuit of hunters and the Game Council, 400 State Forests are now with absolutely no strategy or means for the control of feral animals and the management of their increased impact on the indigenous biodiversity.

State Forests have, for almost seven years, enjoyed an annual economic benefit of $2.4m from restricted licence (r-licence) hunters. The recent Public Benefit Assessment has outlined the contribution r-licence hunters have made to the control of feral animals on State Forest land. In fact, such was the impact of our collective achievements, Forests NSW had virtually eliminated their budget for feral animal control across the lands for which they were responsible.

Now though, because of the Greens ideological pursuit of hunters, there is an enormous vacuum, potentially in the order of 21,000 feral animals annually. Their impact on our indigenous flora and fauna remains to be seen, but we can reasonably expect that it will be quite marked with the passing of time.

What is quite troubling however is the alternative should hunting in State Forests not resume at the same levels of efficiency as in the days of the Game Council.

The Greens have already made murmurs about deer being listed as pests, paving the way for the use of aerial baiting with 1080 poison; a similar path to that followed by NZ and no doubt a similar ecological blitzkrieg awaits us.

And finally a rather bizarre example is one where the Greens position actually flies in the face of the historical ideology of the left-wing, that is the position that supports social-equality in the face of unjust disadvantage.

So venomous and all-consuming is their hatred of hunting, farming and fishing, they are prepared to sever the public from these interests - in effect they aim to remove society's ability to feed itself should we ever suffer a food crises.

And should we ever face a food crises, who will be the first to suffer? Whose children will be the first to go hungry? It will be the disadvantaged among us that will not have any means to harvest their own food from the water or the land. They will be slaves to higher food prices and they will suffer as a direct result of those who are supposed to champion their plight.

But it gets worse - and this is where their ideology creates hypocrites of them - their pursuit for organic, free-range (note, not true free-range, but farmed free-range) and generally less intense farming, if successful, will guarantee that food prices will increase and there is absolutely no question that the vulnerable and disadvantaged in our society will suffer the most.

All in the name of a utopian ideal.

The Conscientious Choice

One of my fundamental beliefs is that each of us has, or should have, the freedom to make a conscientious decision about where we source our food.

This is readily accepted, when it comes to vegetables and fruit; indeed it is actively promoted by an industry, supported by a raft of celebrities and there are various grass roots movements around the world campaigning for public land - footpaths, reserves, etc -  to be converted to, or be made available for market gardens, vegetable plots or herb gardens.

And so it should be the case; it would be a brave but completely misguided and barbaric government to deny people the opportunity or ability to produce or forage for their own food. In countries such as the UK, this idea is further expanded with communities raising livestock on public commons along with healthy crops of vegetables and fruits.

But why should it be any different for the harvesting of meat?

There is little doubt that meat is, for the general populous, an incredibly important part of our diet. There are some who claim a vegetarian diet could be adopted by the global community; to suggest this however, ignores the problems that modern agriculture poses, the enormous threat to the natural biodiversity and the huge toll on sentient beings. In short, it is simply not practical without decimating an already fractured, wounded and vulnerable mother nature.

From an animal welfare perspective, harvesting our meat from the landscape presents perhaps the most humane way of sourcing protein.

Think for a moment about the life of a sheep, cow or pig bred for its meat: from early in its life it is subject to a range of animal husbandry practices that, while necessary, do cause some distress to the animal. From marking lambs, to dehorning cows, to trucking them to an abbatoir, there are few sources of meat that do not cause distress to the animal somewhere in the process.

Now this is not intended to sink the boot into farmers. Far from it, the reality is that without these practices many people would go hungry, malnutrition would be far more prevalent and conflict and social upheaval would plague our communities.

The life of a wild beast on the other hand is most likely one that has never seen or suffered in any way at the hand of man. It is true that there may be the odd animal that has had a close encounter with another hunter, but these are certainly the exceptions to the rule. In hunting we are fulfilling the ultimate in free-range sourced meat.

There is also an enormous benefit to be realised in sourcing meat from introduced game and feral species. There is no denying the impact of cloven hoofed beasts on our fragile, ancient soils has done untold damage to the natural biodiversity of this great land. It is not isolated to terrestrial biodiversity either, with many native fish species suffering habitat destruction through siltation of water holes and sediment smothering spawning grounds (siltation is listed as a key threatening process of the endangered Macquarie Perch - Macquarie Perch - NSW DPI).

I understand that hunting is not for everyone. It is not my intention to 'convert' those who don't currently hunt to this lifestyle. Rather it is to introduce the idea of the conscientious hunter, the idea of harvesting wild meat and the potential benefits of this lifestyle to the individual, to the animal and to the landscape.

But most of all, it is to defend the individual's right to make the conscientious choice about the source of their food.