Kangaroo harvesting in Australia has evolved over the last 30 years or more from simply being a means of finding uses for kangaroos killed under a pest control mindset to being a valuable rural industry employing over 4000 Australians. Despite the dire predictions of some groups opposed to the commercial harvest of Australia's national icon, it has proven itself to be a demonstrably sustainable use of an abundant free-ranging wildlife resource. However, because most landholders do not receive any income from kangaroos harvested on their properties, few view kangaroos as a resource and instead perceive them as competition for sheep, permitting kangaroo harvesters to operate on their properties without receiving any payment. Kangaroo harvesters and processors certainly view kangaroos as a resource, however, the commercial returns from kangaroo harvesting have historically been low and have not flowed through to landholders.
It is against this backdrop that the FATE Program has been exploring the potential of kangaroo harvesting to contribute to ecological, economic and social sustainability in Australia's rangelands.An increasing number of conservationists are embracing the notion that you can enhance the conservation of wildlife species and their habitats by permitting or promoting a wildlife harvest. This concept is known as conservation through sustainable use (CSU) and is based on the notion that natural systems can be both conserved and utilised rather than the common Western approach of dividing land into areas that are to be 'locked up' for conservation and areas that are to be used intensively for agricultural production. By valuing kangaroos as a resource, landholders could:
However, kangaroo harvesting is not yet a good example of CSU, largely because the primary managers of kangaroo populations and habitat - landholders - are yet to receive significant economic returns from their harvest. Sustainable economic returns need to flow to landholders in order to change their perceptions of kangaroos from a pest to a resource and in turn change their management of the habitat that supports them. FATE has been working on strategies for changing perceptions of kangaroos from a pest to a resource and thus create incentives to conserve the ecosystems that support that resource. FATE has identified four key steps required to change landholder involvement in the kangaroo industry:
Currently, 60-70% of kangaroos harvested are processed for pet food due to lack of sufficient demand for meat for human consumption, and of the meat that is used for human consumption, 70% is exported. In recent times kangaroo products have become more accessible in Australian supermarkets, but little is known about the market sectors that currently consume kangaroo in Australia and what marketing exercises would be most effective in boosting consumption and thus boosting the value of kangaroos as a resource.
FATE has recently completed a research project undertaken in conjunction with UTS School of Marketing exploring consumer choice behaviour in relation to kangaroo meat. For a summary of the project's key findings and a link to the full project report see our Choosing Kangaroo page. This project, funded through the New Animal Industries program of the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC), will help to develop targeted strategies for boosting market acceptance and consumption of kangaroo. The project had a specific focus on smallgoods and other manufactured meat products, as kangaroo is yet to find a significant place in this market in Australia, despite the fact that some overseas manufacturers have embraced kangaroo as a high-protein, low-fat component of smallgoods.
As kangaroos are free-ranging wildlife that move freely across property boundaries, it makes intuitive sense for groups of neighbours to work together to manage kangaroos across several properties. Such an approach would also involve working with harvesters and processors to jointly develop an integrated system of strategic harvesting based on an understanding of the local kangaroo population. FATE has been working on models for this sort of communal landholder management of kangaroos with landholders in the Barrier Area Rangecare Group (BARG), north of Broken Hill in far western NSW. BARG members are taking part in a Sustainable Wildlife Enterprise trial being supported by the Rangelands and Wildlife Systems program of the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC), as well as the Western Catchment Management Authority and UNSW's Fowler's Gap Arid Zone Research Station. With the funding and support from these partners, FATE will aim over the next three years to significantly change the ways that landholders engage with each other in relation to kangaroo management, with kangaroo shooters and processors and with the Government agencies involved in the management of kangaroos. For more details on this project, check out the Barrier Ranges Sustainable Wildlife Enterprise page.
Acting together, landholders can be more strategic about the ways in which
they manage kangaroos. Kangaroo mobs can be followed as they move across properties
and harvesting efforts can focus on areas of greatest kangaroo density in
order to maximise harvest efficiency as well as relieve grazing pressure where
it is most acute. Such collective action may also create the critical mass
and bargaining power for landholders to enter the kangaroo industry as commercial
partners. Rangeland condition monitoring using Landscape
Function Analysis and integration of kangaroos into management of total
grazing pressure is an important component of the BARG project.
For landholders to fully embrace involvement in the kangaroo industry, they will need accurate information on the potential costs and returns from a kangaroo enterprise, including the impacts of kangaroo grazing pressure on land condition, biodiversity and other pastoral activities. There has been much criticism of traditional means of comparing kangaroo grazing pressure to that of sheep through calculation of a dry sheep equivalent (DSE). This approach has been accused of over-estimating the amount of pasture resources that kangaroos consume and ignoring the fact that kangaroos and sheep eat different plants or parts of plants for much of the time.
The optimum approach to managing total grazing pressure will be to explore
the ways in which both native animals and domestic stock can be managed in
an ecologically and economically sustainable manner. FATE has been working
with researchers from UNSW and the University of Sydney on projects to better
estimate DSE values for kangaroos and ensure that landholders have better
information available to them on the grazing pressure of both kangaroos and
domestic stock.
If kangaroo management is truly to become a model of sustainable use and the conservation benefits it can achieve, government agencies responsible for managing the harvest will need to take a much more pro-active role in addressing the economic and social sustainability of the harvest. Conservation agencies have traditionally been most involved in gathering data on kangaroo populations, setting harvest quotas and regulating where, how and by whom the harvest is carried out. There has been little recognition of the conservation benefits that could occur through securing a sustainable flow of revenue to landholders from native wildlife harvesting and the resulting changes in the way that land is used and managed.
Kangaroo management plans need to allow and promote adaptive management approaches undertaken by landholders that explore ways in which kangaroo enterprises could contribute to both conservation outcomes and the economic viability of pastoral properties. Adaptive management, which involves a cyclic process of continuous improvement with landholders and researchers developing new strategies, putting them into practice and monitoring their impact, is a key principle of managing sustainable use activities. FATE has been working with kangaroo managers from State conservation agencies to ensure that these ideas can be explored in future management plans.
Last Updated 21 April 2008
