Animal Protectors Alliance (APA) spokesperson, Robyn Soxsmith is delighted at the outcome of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision which overturned a magistrate’s guilty verdict against a angaroo slaughter protestor. Two charges of hindering government officials at last year’s annual kangaroo slaughter were heard in the Magistrate’s court earlier this year. The Magistrate found Dr Chris Klootwijk, guilty on only one of the two charges. Magistrate Walker dismissed the charge in relation to one of the officials purported to have been hindered after she found that the ACT licence to shoot kangaroos was invalid, therefore the killing was illegal, therefore it was not illegal to hinder it.
However, she found Dr Klootwijk guilty on the charge relating to the other official, the ranger who had acted as ‘Incident Controller’ on the night of Klootwijk’s arrest. She found that this official did not need a valid killing licence for his role as Incident Controller.
Justice Elkaim ruled that Magistrate Walker was in error on this point because the Incident Controller was there as part of an unlawful activity.
Meanwhile, Ms Soxsmith claims that this year’s kangaroo slaughter, which has been going on mid May, and which is scheduled to continue until the end of July, has been conducted
entirely under this invalid licence.
“The government seems to think it can get away with anything. Just this week they were shooting so close to Mugga Lane in Isaacs Ridge Reserve, no more than 30 metres away, a
passing motorist could easily have been killed by a ricochet.
“Last year they were shooting, with exactly the same arrogance and impunity, very close to the Centenary Trail which is used by cyclists all hours of the night.
“And this risk to human life is on top of the many ways they are breaching to Code of Practice for shooting kangaroos. The Code, which is supposed to minimise the cruelty of the
slaughter, is very nearly useless as water in a sieve. But at least it says animals should not be wounded and left in agony for hours before being euthanased, by a heart or head shot. And at least it says that orphaned dependent joeys should not be left to starve. Yet eye witness statements attest to both these horrors happening during the ACT slaughter as a matter of
routine.”
Ms Soxsmith assures the people of the ACT that protestors will continue to protest the kangaroo killing every night until it ends this year and will be out in force to do the same next year and every year until the ACT public put an end to “this insanity”.
This paper is about the ACT government’s behaviour in relation to killing kangaroos, not just its treatment of the kangaroos themselves, but the way it has recently been trampling the rights of its own citizens in its zeal to kill kangaroos. This talk was one of three given on 5 April 2016 in Canberra in an event held by the Animal Justice Party, called, "Policy basis for kangaroo treatment in the A.C.T."
The truth about kangaroos in the A.C.T.: Abusing animals and dismantling democracy
1. The First Code of Practice
Very soon after the passage of the ACT Animal Welfare Act in 1992, an Animal Welfare Advisory Committee was formed under the Act, mainly to develop codes of practice for animal welfare.
One of the earliest codes AWAC developed was a Code of Practice for the Humane Killing of kangaroos. This was mainly for local farmers, but it also became clear that it might at some time be wanted by the government itself - if kangaroos ever needed ‘culling’ on public land..
While the Code was not itself mandatory, the legislation was written so that, where there was a code of practice in place, anyone causing pain or distress to an animal in a way that was consistent with the code had a complete defence from prosecution.
On the other hand, anyone causing pain or distress to an animal in a way that was not consistent with the code could be prosecuted.
The Code itself was pretty awful. It recommended bashing to death and decapitation of joeys whose mothers had been killed. But it did at least identify driving and trapping kangaroos as causing pain and distress.
That is the legislative context in which all the ACT kangaroo slaughters before 2014 took place.
2. Googong and BNTS
Not the first slaughter, but the first in which the government’s lack of science came to the attention of the ACT public was at Googong in 2004. FOI material obtained after the event showed that the slaughter was conducted without any scientific studies, or analysis.
Even Don Fletcher, at that time not working for the ACT government, recommended against that slaughter, partly because there had been no ecological studies to determine if it was necessary, partly because (on the government’s own figures) the numbers of kangaroos on the Googong Reserve had already crashed, and partly because of the risk of bush fires if so many of the remaining kangaroos were removed.
The next public slaughter of hundreds of kangaroos was at the Belconnen Naval Transmission Station in 2008.
This was the time first time the power the Animal Welfare Act, combined with the Code of Practice, to protect kangaroos from cruelty was tested in earnest - and failed utterly.
Despite the Code’s identification of driving and trapping as cruel to kangaroos, kangaroos inhabiting the grassland surrounding the decommissioned Naval Transmission Station, were driven into pens by vehicles, trapped there to be darted and killed by lethal injection.
Members of the public watching the whole procedure (except the actual killing which was shielded from the public by a kind of tent) from outside the surrounding fence. They watched mothers separated from their babies, as the mothers were driven into the enclosure. They watched kangaroos bashing themselves against the walls of the enclosure and colliding mid-air, falling to the ground in a tangle of limbs.
The Code which identified this treatment of kangaroos as cruel and therefore unlawful under the Animal Welfare Act was completely ignored, not just by the ACT government but also by the RSPCA, despite numerous calls from members of the public to remind them of the Code.
3. The Current Code of Practice
Perhaps the government realised it had broken its own law with the slaughter at BNTS - as footage of the herding and trapping went to air all over the world. First chance the government got (in 2014), it repealed the Code of Practice which identified driving and trapping kangaroos as cruel, and replaced it with a code (this one not developed by the ACT AWAC) which does not mention driving or trapping. Because it does not mention driving or trapping, the code now ensures that this particular act of cruelty is now entirely lawful.
Meanwhile all the other cruelties that the Code had always permitted continue unabated. Pouch joeys are bludgeoned or decapitated. An entire generation of young at foot every year is orphaned to starve, get mown down by cars, or get taken by predators. No doubt more than one of these young animals has suffered a similar fate to the young male found in one of the government’s burial pits. He was shot, stabbed and bludgeoned before dying either of blood loss or suffocation due to being buried alive.
During a shooting session, whole mobs of kangaroos are panicked into terrified flight, and so we find them crucified on barbed wire fences they could normally clear with ease, drowned in dams they could easily swim out of, or colliding with cars they would normally at least try to avoid.
All this is completely legal under the Animal Welfare Act because the Code of Practice does not identify any of these outcomes as unacceptable.
4. The KMP Bible and the Treatment of Heretics
Another way the ACT government has barricaded itself against criticisms of its kangaroo extermination campaign has been to develop the policy document known as the ACT Kangaroo Management Plan. This has become the unchallengeable authority for all the government’s ongoing kangaroo atrocities.
It has also become the basis for the government to ignore every representation it receives criticising the kangaroo slaughter, even where the criticism relates to breaking Territory law; even when it relates to endangering public safety; and even, believe it or not, when it relates to the government’s failure to adhere to that very same Kangaroo Management Plan.
In an effort to make its position even more unassailable, the government has raised penalties for the trivial offence of trespass on public land to a level high enough to force a low-income person into bankruptcy. It has closed its eyes to reports of shooting taking place when protestors were within spitting distance of the shooters. It ignored the autopsy report on the young kangaroo found in the burial pit.
It has hurled also around wild allegations that kangaroo protestors have committed acts of vandalism, in particular vandalism that hurts other animals, as though they were matters of fact, in spite of the fact the there has never been any evidence to support any of these allegations, nor any charges ever laid.
5. The ACAT Hearings
There have now been three hearings brought to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal against the ACT’s kangaroo slaughter:
- by Animal Liberation NSW in 2009;
- by the Australian Society for Kangaroos in 2013; and
- by Animal Liberation ACT in 2014.
To demonstrate the sacrosanct nature that the government’s policy document, the Kangaroo Management Plan has attained over recent years, the kangaroos and their advocates have lost the case at all three of these hearings.
In all three hearings the case for opposing the slaughter has shown overwhelming
evidence:
- that the slaughter is cruel;
- that the slaughter is ineffective in terms of reducing kangaroo grazing pressure on reserve because kangaroos are pretty mobile within their ranges, and quickly move in from nearby farms to make use of the empty reserves;
- that the slaughter is unnecessary because eastern grey kangaroos are so slow breeding, have such a high infant mortality rate and manage their own populations effectively;
- that the slaughter is actively harmful to ecosystems because kangaroo grazing ensures diversity of habitat for a great diversity of others specie,s many of which cannot thrive in either ungrazed land or livestock grazed land.
The Tribunals also heard clear evidence that the government’s kangaroo counts are inherently inaccurate, that the KMP’s notion of an ideal number of kangaroos per hectare has no basis in science, and that that eastern grey kangaroos across their entire range seem to be in steep and alarming decline.
6.Why These Outcomes?
So why with all this evidence before them, did the three Tribunals rule in favour of the government?
All three Tribunals made this decision on one very simple and astonishing basis. They chose to accept the scientific evidence of Don Fletcher, over that of the independent expert witnesses who gave evidence.
In 2013, the Tribunal even recognised that Fletcher was not there as an independent scientific expert. On that basis, he was allowed to consult with his colleagues during the breaks, and seek further information and advice from his Department. The independent expert witness was not permitted to talk to anyone during the breaks. And yet the Tribunal ruled in favour of the evidence of a person it had already admitted was a government mouthpiece.
Having won three times at ACAT, the government is now supremely confident that all it has to do is mention the Kangaroo Management Plan and it can - perhaps literally - get away with murder.
7. Endangering Humans and Breaking its Own Laws
In 2015, the police allowed shooting with guns to go ahead in an open public place,
the Rose Cottage Horse Paddocks (RCHP), a place that is frequented by members of the public at all hours of the night and day: cyclists on the Centenary Trail; dog walkers; horse riders; teenagers chilling out; young lovers strolling by moonlight; not to mention kangaroos slaughter protestors quite lawfully out on watch for shooters entering the nearby reserve.
The ACT government did not even bother to warn the public that shooting was going on in the RCHP. The Minister, Rattenbury and the FOI Officer both sanctimoniously claimed that the RCHP paddocks because the licence was issued to a private company. This private company is the contractor engaged by the government to manage the RCHP on behalf of the public. Because it is a private company, the government has to protect that company’s privacy.
So much more important than the lives of its citizens.
It even turned out that the shooting on the RCHP on the night it was reported to the police was not even legal. It was made legal the following day by inclusion of the RCHP in an existing licence for shooting on other nearby blocks.
8. The Arrest of a Protestor and Ensuing Court Case
A week later, the same man who reported the dangerous and illegal shooting on the RCHP was arrested on those very same horse paddocks where he had every right to be - for blowing a whistle.
On the first day of the resulting court case (24 February 2016), most of the observers in the courtroom were there to support the defendant, and everyone in the court knew it. Someone (presumably someone outside the courtroom) alleged three times during the course of the morning that one of the observers in the courtroom was taking photographs. It was a small courtroom, and everyone could see anyone else, so it was unlikely the allegation was true, although obviously not impossible.
The third time the assertion was made, the phones of every observer were confiscated for several hours. This was immediately before the court was adjourned for lunch, so the phones were kept out of their owners’ view for a period quite long enough for their entire contents to be downloaded.
As if that was not outrageous enough, a police officer (although out of uniform and with no ID visible) tried to take all the observers’ names as they left the courtroom.
This police officer was none other than the same officer:
• who had falsely assured the defendant (and another member of the public) on 4 June that no shooting would take place on the Rose Cottage Horse Paddocks;
• to whom the illegal shooting on the RCHP had been reported on 24 June 2015;
• who had, on 24 June 2015, falsely assured the defendant the shooting on the RCHP was (after all) legal; and
• who had arrested him on the RCHP a week later.
It was, even at the time, hard not to assume that the allegation that someone had taken photographs was made for one or more of three purposes: to disrupt the coherence of the court case; to prejudice the magistrate against the defendant’s supporters; or simply to get hold of some protestors phones for sinister surveillance purposes.
On the second day of the hearing (8 April 2016), a fourth and even more likely reason came to light. The government prosecutor asked the magistrate to have the case continue as a closed court (ie observers excluded). She gave as her reason the allegation from the previous day of the hearing that someone had taken photographs, along wild assertions about ‘aggressive activists’ (ie this with a room full of women observers of age, intelligence and education similar to that of the magistrate). Thankfully, the magistrate refused the request.
9. Contemptuous Dismissal of Public Representations
Every success the ACT government has had from trampling on its own laws and its citizens’ rights seems to have bolstered its confidence to do it a bit more and a bit worse next time
A detailed submission to the Chief Minister by the Coalition of Animal Protectors (CAP), about the illegal shooting and risk to the lives of citizens went unanswered for three months. When a reminder was sent, someone in the Chief Minister’s Office sent a short, bizarre response was had nothing to do with the submission.
CAP followed this up with equally detailed submissions to the Ombudsman and Police Operations Standards Monitoring Centre (PSOMC). As yet received no response has been received from PSOMC, but very recently a response was received from the Ombudsman’s Office, claiming that matters of environmental administration are outside the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction.
Apparently it does not matter if a public servant who administers environment policy authorises illegal actions, or actions that put human lives at risk, or actions that are contrary to the government’s environmental management policy itself (as represented by the KMP). That public servant is apparently completely exempt from any responsibility to the public.
10. Summation
We have a government which, in its zeal to massacre kangaroos, is willing to:
- put people’s lives at risk
- break its own laws
- trample on the democratic rights of its citizens.
We seem to have no avenue of protest
- through the executive government
- their bureaucrats
- or even their appointed watchdogs, the Ombudsman and the ACAT
We seem to have no redress through the electoral system because the three parties who share the power, the Liberals, Labor and the Greens, appear to have made an unspoken and unholy alliance to keep the policy of massacring kangaroos unassailable.
The mainstream media has declined to undertake any serious investigative journalism into this issue, has refused to even publish the kangaroo defenders’ side of the story without dumbing it down to incomprehensibility.
The government and the media have also played a dirty tricks campaign, and successfully turned the general public against the kangaroo defenders by hurling about rubbish allegations of vandalism.
Even the power of the tactic of people putting themselves on the reserves to force the shooters to stop shooting has been seriously eroded, partly because people are quite understandably afraid of incurring $8000 fines, and partly because the shooters do not seem to stop shooting even when they are there.
11. So What Can We Do?
The short answer is not give up.
One thing we do have that we didn’t have when all this started is an Animal Justice Party to challenge the three-headed political monster we seem to be facing in the ACT: the Liberals, Labour and the Greens. (Please remember, though, that it is only the ACT Greens who seem to have done this deal with the devil.) Social media has also exploded since 2004, and we need to find imaginative, new ways of breaking through the electronic information overload to use it effectively.
However, we also have to keep using some of the old tools: the submissions, the attempts to engage the mainstream media, and getting out to the reserves during the slaughter. When these actions fail, as they now have repeatedly, we must not just throw up our hands and abandon them. These mechanisms are the very essence of democracy. Without them we have nothing.
We must win this campaign, not just for the kangaroos but also for our entire way of life, our entire political system: our right, as responsible citizens, to demand that government officials are answerable for their actions. Governments and their servants must not be permitted to endlessly lie and evade and dismiss, sure of re-election no matter what they do, who or what they kill.
So we must dossiers, as I am doing, on the government’s ever-increasing abuses of its own laws and its own citizens. We must keep believing that one day, we will be in a position to call this government to account for its crimes.
Most of all, of course, we have to win back the ordinary people of the ACT and indeed the rest of Australia to the side of the kangaroos – and all the other animals.
We are not going to save anything if we just dismiss the general public as apathetic and selfish. Most of them are essentially good people. They are just too busy with their own lives, and it is just so much easier to believe the government when it tells them all is well than to bother questioning anything.
We have to be always on our mettle to show ourselves to be people who are unfailingly rational, who know what we’re talking about, who are undiscriminating in our compassion for both humans and animals, and who are absolutely convinced we will win in the end.
Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee is one of fifty well-known authors and scientists who have signed this open letter to the Canberra public protesting the mass killing of kangaroos which has been taking place annually for some time in Canberra. For those interested in the history of this annual slaughter, Candobetter.net has published at length on this subject here: http://candobetter.net/SaveTheKangaroo. It is wonderful that a number of influential people have now put their names on the line to defend kangaroos from slaughter and kangaroo science from ideology. Many more people are also against this absurd and cruel practice. [Candobetter.net Editor: Republished from http://www.beautifulwild.com/. Also available here: http://www.arcohab.org/#!letter/c1yzj. Also the subject of an article in the Canberra Times.]
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PUBLIC OF CANBERRA
We the undersigned believe the need for a mass killing of kangaroos by the ACT Government is ill thought out and cannot be substantiated. The analysis in support of such a program fails the tests of good science, conservation, animal welfare, economy and humanity.
We understand that: no causal evidence of any rigorous kind has been provided that directly links kangaroo grazing on Canberra nature reserves with the demise of other small threatened species. No assessment of the subjective lives of native animals in Canberra’s nature reserves is provided as a clue to their survival. No commonly used non-lethal management tools have been advocated by those who believe in the negative impact of the current kangaroo population on the rest of the environment, despite considerable evidence over many years and in many places that they are effective.
The decision to proceed with the killing disregards the extreme brutality of the killing process. There has been no assessment of the impact of mass native animal killings on the local economy and society and our view is that these costs are substantial.
The scientifically substantiated appreciation of other animals’ cognitive, emotional and psychological capacities requires that we break the cycle of violence of conventional management methods. Abandoning such measures offers a unique opportunity to find innovative solutions which promote sustainability and reflect the desire of communities for peaceful coexistence with other creatures on the planet.
We therefore call for an immediate cessation of the mass killing of these native animals, and for a full and truly independent examination of the above-listed and other relevant matters by respected professionals.
Pam Ahern, Edgar's Mission Farm Sanctuary, Victoria
Dr Rosemary Austen, kangaroo rehabilitation and translocation expert, medical practitioner, ACT
Dr Jonathan Balcombe, biologist, author, Animal Studies Dept (Chair) Humane Society University, Washington D.C. (USA)
Marc Bekoff, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder (USA)
Dr Dror Ben-Ami, Co-founder and lead researcher, Centre of Compassionate Conservation, University of Technology Sydney.
Dr Jeffrey Borchers, ecologist, the Kerulos Center, USA
Dr Melissa Boyde, Australasian Animal Studies Association; Senior Research Fellow, Faculty of Law Humanities and the Arts, University of Wollongong
Gay Bradshaw, PhD (ecology), PhD (psychology), CEO The Kerulos Center (USA)
David Brooks, author, editor, Hon A/Prof, University of Sydney
J M Coetzee, writer
Claire Colebrook, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature, Pennsylvania State University (USA)
Dr Margo DeMello, PhD, Animals & Society Institute (USA)
Carolyn Drew, MAdEd, Executive Director of Regions, Institute for Critical Animal Studies
Lara Drew, Ph D candidate, Education, University of Canberra
Ray Drew, MA Communication Grad Cert Psychoanalytic Studies, Wildlife Photographer
Katrina Fox, journalist and author
Professor Steve Garlick, PhD, University of Technology, Sydney
Stephen Graham LLB, Virtual Lawyers and Mediators Pty Ltd.
Dr Jason Grossman, philosopher of science
Naomi Henry, Voiceless Council
Melanie Joy, PhD, Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston; President, Beyond Carnism; Author
Professor Vrasidas Karalis, Modern Greek Studies, University of Sydney
John Kinsella, author, Professorial Research Fellow, UWA; Professor of Sustainability and Literature, Curtin University.
Lawyers for Animals
David Malouf, writer
Clare Mann, psychologist, author and Managing Director of Communicate31
Jeffrey Masson, Ph.D., Author
Alex Miller, writer
Raymond Mjadwesch, ecologist
Alison Moore, Ph.D., Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts, University of Wollongong
Nic Nassuet, singer/songwriter (USA)
Mark Pearson, member NSW Legislative Council
Teja Brooks Pribac, The Kerulos Center; PhD Candidate University of Sydney
Daniel Ramp, Ph.D., Director, Centre for Compassionate Conservation, University of Technology, Sydney
Tracy Ryan, author
Stephen Sewell, playwright
Lynda Stoner, Animal Liberation NSW
Bill Taylor Ph.D., retired CSIRO plant scientist
Maria Taylor Ph.D., science communication, author, newspaper publisher
Associate Professor Nik Taylor, School of Social and Policy Studies, Flinders University, South Australia
Marianne Thieme, Leader & Chair, Party for the Animals, The Netherlands
Dr Christine Townend, author, founder Animal Liberation, NSW, co-founder Animals Australia
Dr Richard Twine, Co-Director, Centre for Human-Animal Studies, Edge Hill University (UK)
Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel, Ph.D., Socio-Legal Studies and Human Rights, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney
Brenda Walker, writer, Winthrop Professor of English and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia
Bren Weatherstone, M.Env Sci., teacher (ACT)
Elizabeth Webby, Professor Emerita, Australian Literature, University of Sydney
Dr Richard J. White, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, Sheffield Hallam University (UK)
Professor Stuart White, Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney
Phil Wollen, OAM Founder of Winsome Constance Kindness Trust
Gypsy Wulff, Teacher, Author, Publisher, Founder of Spirit Wings Humane Education Inc.
Link to The Alliance for Respectful Co-habitation: www.arcohab.org
Taking action! If you live in or near the Australian Capital Territory, and would like to help out in the field by helping to monitor the reserves, please email Carolyn Drew at [email protected]
NOTES
Candobetter.net: Thank you to Brett Clifton for his wonderful site with photographs of many kangaroos at http://www.brettclifton.com/Welcome.html from which I have sourced the photographs in this article.
#F7BE81;line-height:120%;">The ACT Government has obtained licences to kill 1,600 healthy kangaroos, plus an unknown number of joeys, in Canberra’s nature reserves over the next 3 months. However, for the first time, Animal Liberation ACT is standing up for the ACT’s native animals by challenging the Government’s killing program in the courts. The start of the annual kangaroo kill has been delayed after Animal Liberation ACT successfully obtained an injunction in the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal on 20 May 2014. Support is now needed to continue our Legal Challenge to Stop the ACT Government's Kangaroo Cull. The newly established Animal Defenders Office has provided pro bono legal services to get us to this point. We now need to raise funds urgently to cover the costs of a barrister for the legal battle ahead of us in the main hearing which began on Tuesday the 3rd of June 2014. The hearing ran for four days, and a decision is expected next week on whether to allow the killing of more than 1,600 kangaroos on Canberra's 'nature' reserves. Small and large donations welcome. Donate via Go Fund Me at http://www.gofundme.com/SaveRoos Legal costs are expected to $20,000. Let's make this case huge! Animal Liberation ACT would like to sincerely thank the Animal Defenders Office for their incredibly hard work and professionalism in taking this case to a new level. We would also like to thank our Kangaroo Campaign members for all their work behind the scenes in assisting the legal team with the case. Thank you in advance supporters!
For other candobetter.net about kangaroo culls, especially in the ACT see this tag.
"ACT government senior ecologist Dr Donald Fletcher [see more below] defended the research behind the cull, as a hearing before the full bench of ACAT entered its third day on Thursday [5 June 2014]. [...] At one point [Animal Liberation's lawyers] argued a graph, which contained data used to justify the shootings at one reserve, was "pretty useless", although Dr Fletcher stood by most of the figures in the report.
Dr Fletcher admitted he hadn't made adjustments to the population figures throughout the year, and didn't take into account fluctuations due to the time of year the kangaroo populations were counted. He said that meant the government was likely to be ''under-culling'' this year. ''One of the flaws is I haven't allowed for that spring increment,'' he said. Dr Fletcher said several times he couldn't remember how he had calculated certain figures in the population growth estimates. When questioned by lawyers, Dr Fletcher said one of the figures in the data did not demonstrate good science.
[...] On Wednesday, former CSIRO plant scientist Dr William Taylor told the hearing there were "significant deficiencies" in the data the ACT government used for the cull.
The tribunal allowed last year's cull to go ahead following a similar legal challenge brought by animal welfare groups, and a decision was made to target fewer animals.
For the first time the 'science' behind the annual Kangaroo cull has been called into question and we have to thank everyone who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to create such a strong case against the Government. Thank you also to those who attended the hearing, your presence was extremely supportive. And a huge thank you to the ADO team who without their knowledge, professionalism and what became hundreds of hours of work, we would not have had a case.
Animal Liberation ACT’s lawyers, the Animal Defenders Office, persuaded a judge to grant a stay against the kangaroo cull on the basis that the government has failed in its duty to prove the kangaroo cull had improved biodiversity over the past six years.
“They have not collected any baseline data or monitoring data on the conditions of other species on the reserves they say they are saving,” says legislative drafter Ward, who moonlights as a volunteer with the Animal Defenders Office. “If the government wants to go and kill more than 1,600 healthy wild animals, we have to be clear that the science is impeccable before we let them do that.”
Dr Fletcher’s Phd thesis oddly at odds with Canberra culls
One scientist who was closely associated with the Belconnen cull and the Majura cull, was Don Fletcher. Fletcher is the Senior Ecologist in Research and Monitoring in Parks, Conservation and Lands, Department of Territory and Municipal Services, ACT. His involvement in the Belconnen Roo cull seems to have been officially limited to capturing then releasing female survivors after inserting contraceptives in them. He was one of the writers of the public consultation document leading up to the Majura cull.
He defended these culls and has defended the assessments leading up to the Majura culls in a public consultation document. Yet his own thesis on the “Population Dynamics of Eastern Grey Kangaroos in Temperate Grasslands,” seemed to discredit claims at the basis of these culls, which were too high population density and a need to manage it down to one kangaroo per hectare. For instance, he wrote on page 237 of his study that :
“The study did not provide evidence that high densities of kangaroos reduce groundcover to the levels where erosion can accelerate. Unmanaged kangaroo populations did not necessarily result in low levels of ground cover. Groundcover had a positive but not significant relationship to kangaroo density, with the highest cover at the wettest site where kangaroo density was highest. Weather has an important influence on groundcover.[1]”
He also wrote that some of the populations he was studying were at the highest density recorded. They ranged between 4.5 and 5.1 kangaroos per hectare. The density in the studies below was expressed in square kilometers. To get density per hectare, divide by 100. [2] Fletcher wrote:
“The kangaroo density estimates reported in Chapter 7 for the three study sites (mean eastern grey kangaroo densities of 450, 480 and 510 km2) are the highest kangaroo densities reported. For comparison, the maximum density of combined red kangaroos and western grey kangaroos in the Kinchega study was less than 56 km2 (Bayliss 1987) and the density of eastern grey kangaroos at Wallaby Creek (Southwell 1987b) was 41 to 50 km2. The next highest kangaroo density outside the vicinity of my study sites appears to be that of Coulson et al. (1999a) for eastern grey kangaroos at Yan Yean Reservoir near Melbourne, which was 220 km2.”
Coulson’s study of kangaroos at 2.2 per ha was published in 1999 as Coulson G, Alviano P, Ramp P, Way S “The kangaroos of Yan Yean: history of a problem population”. [3] Graham Coulson’s Yan Yean article is frequently cited by kangaroo population students and he seems to be thought of as the originator of the “one kangaroo per kilometer” ‘rule’.
I did contact Dr Fletcher by email, and he was initially quite friendly, but when I attempted to ask him questions about his thesis responses to my emails ceased, even though I re-sent the emails.
NOTES
[1] Don Fletcher, “Population Dynamics of Eastern Grey Kangaroos in Temperate Grasslands,” was on line as a pdf, which is the form I downloaded it as. Now apparently only available from University of Canberra Library, reference: http://nla.gov.au/anbd.bib-an42269526. A book by the same title and author has also been published.
[2] There are 100 ha in one square km. So if density varied between 450 and 510 kangs per square km, then that is 4.5 p ha or 5.10 per ha. With 220 per square km 2.2 per ha.
[3] Coulson G, Alviano P, Ramp P, Way S (1999). “The kangaroos of Yan Yean: history of a problem population”, Proc R Soc Vic 111: 121–130.
The Panel assembled a legal team of Sydney senior and junior counsel instructed by international law firm, DLA Piper, to apply to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal this afternoon on behalf of Australian Society for Kangaroos to injunct the ACT kangaroo cull due to commence it was thought this evening. During the hearing it was disclosed that the ACT had planned to commence the first round of shooting on Tuesday night.
7 June 2013
In summary, the hearing will resume next Wednesday to determine whether the Australian Society for Kangaroos and another applicant, Animal Liberation ACT, each has standing to sue. The ACT Conservator of Flora and Fauna has undertaken not to commence any killing pending the Tribunal’s determination next Wednesday, 12 June 2013.
The matter has been stood over until 11:00 am next Wednesday, 12 June 2013 for further hearing. The Tribunal made orders that:
the Australian Society for Kangaroos file and serve affidavit evidence by close of business on Tuesday 11 June 2013 in support of its status as an entity, the interests of which are affected by the decision under review, and whether it has the authorisation to commence these proceedings.
the Respondent (the Conservator) is to file and serve affidavit evidence by close of business on Tuesday 11 June 2013 that she (the Conservator) seeks to rely on in response to the application for interim relief.
The Tribunal also noted the undertaking by the ACT Conservator of Flora and Fauna to not commence any killing or activity pursuant to the Licences (all seven) until the Tribunal determines the application for interim orders. Animal Liberation ACT filed a separate application heard at the same time and was represented by a volunteer for the company.
A recent article about Nigel Franks, who tortured a female kangaroo and cruelly disposed of her joey, led to expressions of despair and horror about this young man's behaviour. A criminological link between cruelty to animals and cruelty to humans was drawn. I would like to suggest here that there may also be a political explanation in the normalisation of cruelty to animals by Australian authorities. Governments are demonstrating that they think it is okay to mistreat these sentient creatures, with the thinnest of justifications. At the end of this article I will suggest that this political attitude may forerun government violence against citizens in Australia.
Public shame for one, Status for another
One does not have to go so very far to see the example that Nigel Franks may have been following. Australian Government attitudes to kangaroos are appalling. They are violent, cruel, and use corrupt science (see "ACT Roo killings: Who profits? Behind the Earless Dragon mask". In mild contradiction to other anemic motherhood statements about 'biodiversity', their actions denigrate nature and objectify warm-blooded social animals by acting as if they have no family feelings and no rights to place and life itself.[1]
Government propaganda an inspiration to sadists?
Individuals who are gratuitously violent towards kangaroos quite possibly justify their actions as getting rid of 'pests' just like the ACT and other state governments. Kangaroos are not pests, of course, but they are demonised and objectified as such. "Theories" on kangaroo overpopulation ignore Australian Federal and State government policies to artificially stimulate human population growth on and around kangaroo territory and to run cattle and sheep in competition with kangaroos, even in the National Parks. Practice purportedly based on scientific theory on kangaroo overpopulation even ignores its own research. ACT government scientist, Don Fletcher, has been supportive of kangaroo culls on the basis of 'overpopulation', yet his own doctoral thesis, on my reading, completely undermines those attitudes. For instance, he wrote on page 237 of his study [2] that :
“The study did not provide evidence that high densities of kangaroos reduce groundcover to the levels where erosion can accelerate. Unmanaged kangaroo populations did not necessarily result in low levels of ground cover. Groundcover had a positive but not significant relationship to kangaroo density, with the highest cover at the wettest site where kangaroo density was highest. Weather has an important influence on groundcover.”
Translation, if needed: Fletcher found that very high densities of kangaroos, even in wet weather, have unimportant impact on grassland.
Fletcher also wrote that some of the populations he was studying were at the highest density recorded. They ranged between 4.5 and 5.1 kangaroos per hectare. The density in the studies below was expressed in square kilometers. To get density per hectare, divide by 100. Fletcher wrote:
“The kangaroo density estimates reported in Chapter 7 for the three study sites (mean eastern grey kangaroo densities of 450, 480 and 510 km2) are the highest kangaroo densities reported. For comparison, the maximum density of combined red kangaroos and western grey kangaroos in the Kinchega study was less than 56 km2 (Bayliss 1987) and the density of eastern grey kangaroos at Wallaby Creek (Southwell 1987b) was 41 to 50 km2. The next highest kangaroo density outside the vicinity of my study sites appears to be that of Coulson et al. (1999a) for eastern grey kangaroos at Yan Yean Reservoir near Melbourne, which was 220 km2.”
Does the emotional blunting affect our judiciary?
Was the magistrate who gave Nigel Franks a suspended sentence, disappointing many animal carers, influenced by the same attitudes? If the government leads with misinformation and violence, we can perhaps expect some of our judiciary to go along with this and some of our youth to act it out. Our laws and their enforcement also reflect this immoral and violent outlook, this unfair demand upon the environment that it give 100% of everything to our species alone (which then is siphoned upwards to the cruel and greedy elite who model these attitudes in the first place.) Australian State government performances with regard to carrying out their obligations under wildlife acts and environmental laws have been formally shown up as incompetent and mean by recent Auditor General reports. ("Tasmania, West Australia, Victoria - our wildlife are ignored by government," and "Damning Auditor General Report on Fauna protection for Victoria.".
Unfortunately demographic 'science' is full of potted attitudes like the clunky ones on which the ACT bases its 'wildlife management'. Whilst wildlife activists that compare the shooting squads to Nazi death squads may initially strike daily consumers of the Age, the Australian, ABC and commercial tv and radio as dramatic and implausible, the clunky swiss-cheese of economic and demographic 'science' is very similar. Hitler's message,[3] on the basis of publicly endorsed statistics which really only bulked up church and business attitudes were that Germans should breed up and jews, gypsies, homosexuals, insane and intellectually disabled people should be culled. The ACT's message, on the basis of publicly endorsed statistics which really only bulk up growth lobby and economic scorched earth attitudes (shared by most churches, although perhaps not always the Anglican Church) are that Australians and new Australians should breed up and kangaroos, dingos, and wildlife habitat should be culled because they are clogging up the economy or are in need of pain-relief due to being too many now that we have taken their habitat. If possible we should make money out of them first by turning them into dog food for one market or gourmet meat for another market, composed of those who like to think they are showing discriminating taste and economic intelligence. Completely overlooked in this case, by normally humane people who are usually kind to animals, is that these creatures that stand on two legs like us, look forward like us, and bring up their young together like us in close-knit social groups, and can meet our gaze, also have feelings and memories like us. They may not be human but that does not make them nothing.
Thinking of animals as stupid 'things' pervasive
People are so blind to the consequences of what we do to other creatures that it is, not only possible, but the rule, for a human being to move into a new suburb and not realise that land was cleared for that house and that, therefore, other creatures were displaced. Then, when one of those creatures tries to fight back, no connection is made. Reading this article ("Woman-says-kangaroo-stalked-her-then-attacked."), about a kangaroo who attacked a woman and her dog in a new housing estate, you have to wonder, are most humans really so much more intelligent than kangaroos when they seem to lack such a basic understanding of territoriality? A more satisfactory explanation is that our society teaches us to ignore what is obvious - kangaroos experience suffering and can react to persecution.
Kangaroos are horribly badly treated in Australia. They are harassed, hunted and tortured, culled in thousands. The area where the animal described in the article alluded to above attacked or defended itself is an area of suburban expansion. We cannot know what that animal saw happen to its family, but it is very likely that this was its clan territory (clans are subsidiary to 'mobs') and that it has seen terrible things. The only reason people are surprised at this kind of thing is because they have so objectified these animals that they simply do not give them credit for feelings. This animal would be a refugee in his own country. It is heartbreaking for anyone with compassion and open eyes. I have spent a fair amount of time with wild kangaroos and have never encountered an aggressive one, although quite a few frightened ones, including some over 7 feet tall. As an environmental sociologist who looks at population and land-use planning I can see how our system is all wrong and our culture cruel to animals and to people and that these two things are related.
Overpopulation - human or kangaroo?
The reader may notice my attention to the problem of human overpopulation in Australia. My attitude could be described as 'eco-malthusian' but I have never advocated the culling of human beings. There are so many ways to defuse our population bomb and I have written a short book on this issue that identifies keys to stabilising population that are inherent in populations of most or all species, including human ones. Unfortunately for the status quo of dodgy demographics, I became curious and did my own research. I will be bringing out a more comprehensive book but the basic theory has been published and is available. If you really want to know how populations work ecologically, you can purchase Sheila Newman, The Urge to Disperse and Sheila Newman, Demography Territory Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations at Amazon.com and Lulu.com among other retailers.[4]
Population and economic growth model and its consequences all unnecessary
The drive for economic and population growth in this country is counterintuitive to what most of us know to be true. For this reason constant propaganda is needed to obscure its adverse consequences and to make us ignore the evidence of our own eyes and hearts. We have every reason to think for ourselves in this case, instead of listening to our corrupt and emotionally blunted official leadership.
The financial and development industry reliance on population growth to fund expansion is no longer economically viable even in the short-term. It is contributing to the rise in the cost of water, power, food and housing. These high costs make manufacturing in this country extremely uncompetitive against other countries where the cost of land is much less. These high costs have contributed to the destruction of our manufacturing industry and our import/export imbalance. These costs are within the control of the government through the reduction of costly economic activity which is based on the creation of debt for the profit of a few focused beneficiaries in the growth lobby.
Employment is going to start to dry up and this is immediately very frightening if you are paying rent, mortgages or need to drive a car to get to food outlets. Once again, the government can mediate and mitigate the impact of employment decline. There is actually a positive way to deal with this. That is to halve the working day, share the work, and to reduce the costs of living which are in Australia’s control. Slowing down our economy by stopping expansion will save fuel, save lives, and save time for quality of life and local community strengthening. (I have written more extensively about how to cut down our impact per capita by limiting production and increasing local self-government, notably in the first chapter of Sheila Newman, Ed.The Final Energy Crisis,, 2nd Edition, Pluto Books, 2008.)
Unfortunately, instead of a democratic review of our resources and self-government strengths to meet the coming resource crisis, we have seen a rise in cruelty to other species and the objectification of citizens into customer-subjects to King Economy. Just as criminologists draw a lesson in psychology between Geoffrey Dalmar's and Ted Bundy's cruelty to domestic animals and their 'progress' to cruelty to humans, we should draw a warning from the increasingly blatant use of propaganda to justify cruel annihilation of native animals to facilitate the activities of an elitist growth lobby. As propaganda paves the way for developers to cover natural habitat and agricultural land with new suburbs for private profit, we may see that cruelty to humans follows the collapse of democracy in population policy and land-use planning in Australian states.
Are there any exceptions to the rule that destruction of local environments always accompanies destruction of democracy, equality and fraternity? Is the pain we know we cause around us a sign we should attend to for our own good?
NOTES
[1] By talking about warm-blooded species, I am putting roos in a similar grouping to humans, but that does not mean that I think that 'cold-blooded' species don't deserve our respect.
[2] Don Fletcher, “Population Dynamics of Eastern Grey Kangaroos in Temperate Grasslands,” was on line as a pdf, which is the form I downloaded it as. Now apparently only available from University of Canberra Library, reference: https://nla.gov.au/anbd.bib-an42269526. A book by the same title and author has also been published. For more detailed analysis of the ACT situation and the 'science' of the culls, see (see "ACT Roo killings: Who profits? Behind the Earless Dragon mask".
[3] I have been criticized for wielding the Nazi example as if it were the only example of depraved official behaviour in relatively recent history. Unfortunately it isn't and the wars instigated in the Middle East by western powers are a contemporary example of brutality on the basis of proven false propaganda (weapons of mass destruction etc.) Almost anywhere strategic to resources or marketable land sees dispossession and brutality on a state and corporate organised basis. See Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine for a team-research effort in exposing the motives and examples of this.
[4] The theory of the book is written first from a sociological angle and then from a biological angle. I found that some sociologists had problems understanding the biology and some biologists had problems understanding the sociology, despite positive peer reviewing from biologist, Prof David Pimentel of Cornel University and Dr Joseph Smith, who is a doctor of environmental law with knowledge of inheritance law. I will therefore be bringing out a longer book, with a generalist introduction and integrating the territorial allocation part of the theory with human inheritance laws and land-use planning and historical and actual examples, in the next few months hopefully.
Animal Protectors Alliance (APA) spokesperson, Robyn Soxsmith is delighted at the outcome of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision which overturned a magistrate’s guilty verdict against a angaroo slaughter protestor. Two charges of hindering government officials at last year’s annual kangaroo slaughter were heard in the Magistrate’s court earlier this year. The Magistrate found Dr Chris Klootwijk, guilty on only one of the two charges. Magistrate Walker dismissed the charge in relation to one of the officials purported to have been hindered after she found that the ACT licence to shoot kangaroos was invalid, therefore the killing was illegal, therefore it was not illegal to hinder it.
This paper is about the ACT government’s behaviour in relation to killing kangaroos, not just its treatment of the kangaroos themselves, but the way it has recently been trampling the rights of its own citizens in its zeal to kill kangaroos. This talk was one of three given on 5 April 2016 in Canberra in an event held by the Animal Justice Party, called, "Policy basis for kangaroo treatment in the A.C.T."
Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee is one of fifty well-known authors and scientists who have signed this open letter to the Canberra public protesting the mass killing of kangaroos which has been taking place annually for some time in Canberra. For those interested in the history of this annual slaughter, Candobetter.net has published at length on this subject here: 
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PUBLIC OF CANBERRA
The ACT Government has obtained licences to kill 1,600 healthy kangaroos, plus an unknown number of joeys, in Canberra’s nature reserves over the next 3 months. However, for the first time, Animal Liberation ACT is standing up for the ACT’s native animals by challenging the Government’s killing program in the courts. The start of the annual kangaroo kill has been delayed after Animal Liberation ACT successfully obtained an injunction in the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal on 20 May 2014. Support is now needed to continue our Legal Challenge to Stop the ACT Government's Kangaroo Cull. The newly established Animal Defenders Office has provided pro bono legal services to get us to this point. We now need to raise funds urgently to cover the costs of a barrister for the legal battle ahead of us in the main hearing which began on Tuesday the 3rd of June 2014. The hearing ran for four days, and a decision is expected next week on whether to allow the killing of more than 1,600 kangaroos on Canberra's 'nature' reserves. Small and large donations welcome. 
The Panel assembled a legal team of Sydney senior and junior counsel instructed by international law firm, DLA Piper, to apply to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal this afternoon on behalf of Australian Society for Kangaroos to injunct the ACT kangaroo cull due to commence it was thought this evening. During the hearing it was disclosed that the ACT had planned to commence the first round of shooting on Tuesday night.
7 June 2013
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