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Kangaroo cull plan catches military on the hop

Australia's military, caught on the hop by public outrage at plans to shoot thousands of kangaroos on its bases, now plans to move them in air-conditioned comfort at a cost of over A$3,600 (Dh11,334) a head.

  • Reuters
  • Published: 23:12 August 3, 2007
  • Gulf News

Canberra: Australia's military, caught on the hop by public outrage at plans to shoot thousands of kangaroos on its bases, now plans to move them in air-conditioned comfort at a cost of over A$3,600 (Dh11,334) a head.

Local newspapers said the 3,200 eastern grey kangaroos would be trucked to a village more than an hour away from Canberra after protests over plans to employ professional hunters to shoot them.

The Defence Department said in May the kangaroos were causing serious erosion due to over-grazing on two drought-ravaged military bases, including a firing range, and were endangering a species of local lizard and the threatened gold sun moth.

The marsupials, which feature on Australia's coat-of-arms, have moved from the fringes of Canberra into the city centre amid a 10-year drought which has only been partly eased by light winter rains.

A secret plan prepared for the defence department and obtained by the Canberra Times newspaper, said thousands of kangaroos would be sterilised on the Belconnen Naval Transmission Station and Majura military training area to control numbers.

Hundreds of others would be sedated with valium and trucked in special air-conditioned vans to the rural village of Braidwood, east of Canberra.

The kangaroos would be herded into a padded pen and sedated, then shot with a paintball gun to mark them as ready for transport, the report by the Wildcare protection group for the Defence Department said.

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