“Every shooter involved in an Orwellian ACT ‘conservation cull’ is doing the exact opposite of what any competent stock-breeder would do when culling his or her herd,” writes grazier IAN MacDOUGALL.
In May, 1930 a farmer named Wilfred Batty, of Mawbanna, Tasmania, heard a commotion in his chook house. Rifle in hand, he went to investigate and finished up shooting the last known wild thylacine, or “Tasmanian Tiger”.
The species itself lasted only six more years, the last known one dying from exposure in Beaumaris Zoo, Hobart, on September 7, 1936.
In wild populations, every member of every known animal species can be classified as fitted-out by Nature to be a herbivore, omnivore, carnivore, or parasite (as in the cases of the mosquito and the blood-sucking vampire bat).
All species are also at some position in a food-chain, and their abundance according to their total biomass can mean assignment to a position in a food pyramid, with a rough 10-fold decrease in biomass at each step up the pyramid. One hundred tonnes of producers (plants) will support 10 tonnes of herbivores, which in turn will support one tonne of carnivores.
Thus, driving through the countryside one sees plants (eg grasses, trees) everywhere, but not so many plant-eaters (eg cattle, horses, sheep, kangaroos) and only very rarely a wild carnivore (dingo, fox, domestic cat or dog gone wild).
My wife and I, and my wife’s brother have been part of a cattle-farming enterprise. But now is the right time for us to quit. Looking back, while I have shot plenty of rabbits, the odd fox and some injured domestic animals, I have never shot a native marsupial, except for one or two injured beyond recovery through encounters with fences or a motor vehicle.
But you can take it from me: the wildlife-protection laws in this country are a sick joke. When did you ever hear of some farmer or grazier being prosecuted for shooting kangaroos without a permit, for their competitive grazing or dining on a crop?
However, permit or not, there is another dimension. Cut to the ACT ‘roo cull. Every carnivorous or herbivorous animal is a gene selector, whether aware of that or not, selecting genes and the organisms carrying them in or out of their target population.
For example, wild carnivores can easily pick the weakest and slowest-fleeing animals: those that one might say are short on genes for speed, and proceed to select them out of the general stampede.
But a shooter can, with a rifle of whatever kind, simply select out “the biggest and the best” – particularly if the carcasses can be sold on some meat and/or skin market.
Such a feat takes absolutely no skill or superior speed or strength at all. Thus, every shooter involved in an Orwellian ACT “conservation cull” is doing the exact opposite of what any competent stock-breeder would do when culling his or her herd.
So, the shooters, the politicians directing them and we electors, who vote those latter into office, are each and all in our own ways, following in the footsteps of Wilf Batty, and are helping along a chain of events that will likely see the total extermination of the Eastern Grey Kangaroo, from long or short-term genetic decline.
Simply because no shooter can know what effect he or she is having on the gene pool of the target species, each of them might as well be shooting their bullets or contraceptive darts with their head inside a thick black bag.
The result will most likely be a steady weakening of that ‘roo gene pool, and sooner rather than later, the total extermination of the Eastern Greys. And we Canberrans will all have been part of the process.
So, I recommend leaving it all to the population control systems natural to the kangaroos; and to Mother Nature. She has always been the best gene selector.
Finally, firing rifles in ACT reserves and parks is inherently dangerous, and, of course, illegal. It can only be a matter of time, and well short of Doomsday, before some citizen or casual tourist gets themselves culled; by bullet or dart. Then there will be political Hell to pay.
The Orwellian cull is supposed to be about protecting the earless dragon and other creepy-crawlies needing “conservation”, and as well reducing damaging motor vehicle encounters with ‘roos.
I on the other hand would recommend that the government both encourage motorists to slow down, and seek the support of the home and business insurers, who paid out big-time for the 2002-3 bushfire event; in which “four people died, hundreds were injured and 510 properties were destroyed” (Wikipedia) and, incidentally, the creepy-crawlies all went up in smoke as well.
The ‘roos definitely help prevent fire by eating much of the fuel in the reserves; particularly the under-storey grasses, shrubs and small trees. And I recommend that the next such memorable event coming be named The Great Barr-Vassarotti-Rattenbury Fire, in honour of those who will have done so much to cause it.
Ian MacDougall taught science and biology at all levels in the ACT school system. These days he commutes between Canberra and Gulargambone, in northwestern NSW, where he has an interest in a cattle property.
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