Commercial exploitation of Kangaroos: Codes of Practice have failed to modify the industry-wide use of inhumane practices at all or resulted in any improvement of animal welfare outcomes.

This story attempts to piece together the history of mass killing of native Australian species in State and National Parks in Victoria. Over 100,000 Kangaroos have been targeted since 1984, when the killing began.

Three species, the Red Kangaroo, the Eastern Grey Kangaroo and the Wallaroo are exploited for commercial gain across six shooting zones in Queensland. They plan to turn 2.5 million Kangaroos into pet food in 2024. No chance of that.

10,420,536 protected native animals were killed in Tasmania in a nine year period from mid 2013 using ‘protection’ permits issued by and promoted by the Tasmanian Government, RTI documents reveal.

Quarter 2 and 3 Summary 2023 Reports for Victoria’s ‘Kangaroo Harvesting Program’ were finally published, after much chasing, in late October 2023. This is what they reveal.

The night had been a noisy one, after the heavy monsoon rain of the afternoon there had been enough sunshine left in the day to take some of the moisture from the wet ground.

Sitting silently in the bush alongside a Wallaby is always a joy, these are wonderful and gentle animals.

With the increasing likelihood of another bad fire season in 2023 we look back at what went on just three years ago.

This story provides a series of short reflections about the treatment of wildlife in the State of Victoria.

Washington D.C. Leading a bipartisan group of three Republicans and three Democrats as sponsors introduced the Kangaroo Protection Act, H.R. 4995 to ban the sale of kangaroo body parts in the United States.

Modest in scale, the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art manages to curate both fine and deeply intellectual exhibitions. This time we are here to see an exhibition, which touches at the very heart of our concerns for the natural world.

The Victorian Government has invited the public to comment, via a survey, on its latest Kangaroo 'harvest management plan'.

Disturb or destroy that habitat and you will exterminate the species as surely as if you had shot it.

We make another journey through place and time and discover that context matters.

Commercial Kangaroo harvest quotas are never met.

Licences to harm are non-commercial permits and with few exceptions are issued to kill protected Australian species in NSW.

Kneeling in the soft and warmed evening sand. Letting these fine and warm grains trickle through fingers, knowing this is a beautiful and ancient place.

This analysis of the situation for Kangaroos in Western Australian in 2023 completes the analysis of all states and mainland territories in Australia for that year.

Here there is a beauty formed by nature and time.

Amid silly claims and population estimates, what are the facts, how many Kangaroos are being processed for commercial gain?

Commercial Kangaroo shooters operate during the night and are not required to advise residents when and where they are working.

In 2021 in Victoria, just 2.6 per cent of the permits issued to ‘control’ Australian wildlife were for non-lethal control.

Mr. Gore, who went out this day with his gun, had the good fortune to kill one of the animals which had been so much the subject of our speculation.

Matina Tsaloumas’ poetry is inspired by the beauty and the destruction of the natural world, history, social upheaval, everyday life, and great poets through the ages.

The Australian public believe that their wildlife is protected, if they believe that they will be wrong.

It has not rained for a long time, the last big rains about a year ago, sending water down the now dry riverbeds.

This analysis discusses the events in the United States regarding concerns about Kangaroo welfare issues and resulting actions.

Shockingly, and after the floods and years of mass killing of Kangaroos, the Victorian Government claims a 24 per cent increase in Kangaroo populations.

In outback New South Wales, where there is an estimated population of just under 3 million Kangaroos, we counted just one living Kangaroo.

The latest claims of population increases represent a step change in the scale and scope of the killing as they relate to the improbable claims being made.

What follows are our reflections on the state of wildlife, particularly Kangaroos, during extensive journeys by road across the Australian continent.

In the State of Victoria, here are some of the ways in which Australia’s native wildlife is killed, mostly with enthusiastic government support.

The ACT continues to be a leader in developing policies that push the limits of what is being done to Kangaroos, what is ‘lawful’ and what levels of cruelty are acceptable

In this story we travel to snow country and meet the snow monsters.

Diane, from New South Wales, sounds a warning of things to come in Victoria.

Victoria and South Australia, so what happened to wildlife during the fires and the original COVID pandemic?

It is remarkable that in the heat and dry of the Australian interior that there is such an array of plant life. The desert in spring sparkles with flowers and seedpods.

We go back to 2017, we begin with an island, far from the Australian mainland and remote in the Indian Ocean.

Nature is so incredibly precious, we disrupt the natural world at our own very great peril. Here is some history.

If you want to be really angry about what is happening to wildlife populations around the world, Queensland is a very good place to start.

Britain began its relationship with the Kangaroo in a painting by S T Edwards, published as an engraving in Museum Leverianum in 1796.

We spend a lot of time in the Northern Territory and see very few Kangaroos.

The species of Kangaroo available for commercial exploitation will include three new species.

A film and a poem for the missing.

This is the model for all communities and reduces risk and conflict with wildlife.

This story documents the RSPCA’s attempts to close a regional animal shelter.

In this story we provide brief insights as we travel the world.

We take a journey back in time to 2017 and to Bathurst in New South Wales.

As each year goes by there are fewer and fewer animals in the wild. Reflections from 2019.

Snake Prakash’s life, as his name suggests, is snakes.

Peter Hylands says this is a subject that touches on my own childhood in the European Alps.

In 2012 Andrea and Peter Hylands travelled to Corfu to catch up with the Durrell team.

The entry to Rinca Island and its landing area is also beautiful.

It is the Komodos that we have come to visit.

Remaining Grey Kangaroo populations will increasingly be associated with land for wildlife properties, the edge of towns, public lands and wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centres.

After Victoria’s most catastrophic fires on record, its government claims a steep rise in the Kangaroo population.

So in this story (from April 2021) I take another look at what is going on in Australia’s State of Victoria.

January 2022, we are filming Australian wildlife at the edge of a National Park in the West of Victoria.

Two species of Kangaroo are currently killed for commercial gain in Western Australia, the Red Kangaroo and the Western Grey Kangaroo.

There are a number of significant concerns in relation to wildlife in Tasmania.

As the Ainu describe it, the place where the earth ends.

There is plenty of evidence that Kangaroo populations in Victoria are vanishing, and fast.

Come with us to Sydney’s very beautiful Macquarie Street and its house of wisdom and modernity. Come inside and listen.

We spend a day in the bushlands around the farming region of Yea in the Australian state of Victoria.

Queensland and its species: Extinct, threatened and vulnerable species

Regional extinctions are also commonplace as the range (distribution) of a species contracts and fragments.

This analysis (2018) lists the extinct, endangered, vulnerable and rare species in South Australia. Here I have just added mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian and plant species.

This is a story about Kangaroos, about cities and how we visualise and understand numbers.

Good scientific practice requires methodologies to be replicated and repeated.

The way we treat the natural world needs a rethink, and fast.

So with Kangaroos in mind, once more we make the long journey from Melbourne to Bathurst in New South Wales.

What I have been through, no human should have to go through.

If we destroy species and habitats, you do not have to be a genius to understand the result.

The people who attempt to protect the wildlife are ignored and demeaned by their politicians.

It is left to a dedicated few to pick up the pieces.

On the day of writing this, Australia released its State of the environment report – written last year and slipped in the draw until a change of Government in Canberra.

In 2017 the permits issued in Victoria to kill Red Kangaroos exceeded their entire state population estimates by 2,187 animals.

This report contains reflections on a trip in Western Victoria in June 2022.

This blog is about friendships with Emus and anecdotes from old friends regarding this remarkable bird.

What I think was so important about Corfu and Gerry’s time there was it triggered in him a lifelong and entirely focused passion about the natural world.

I wanted to explore how our relationship with animals was changing as societies and cultures around the world adapt to rapidly changing circumstances.

In these bleak blackened landscapes of South Eastern Australia the sound of silence, of nature destroyed.

All wildlife in these fire zones need help, not just threatened species.

The fires burned the landscapes at catastrophic scale and energy.

In order to maintain the Kangaroo population estimates, new shooting zones and regions are added as others close because the Kangaroos are gone.

In 2022 the population estimate has again increased to 10.9 million Kangaroos across the 15 Kangaroo shooting zones, an increase of 4.5 per cent compared to the survey results of the previous year.

All the way from France, Laetitia, is working as a wildlife carer at Possumwood.

In 2019 just over 4,000 Kangaroos were killed in these parks, in 2020 it was 1,958.

Setting the quotas for 2022 - In 2021, all 22 survey monitor blocks in Queensland were surveyed.

Dr Rosemary Austen describes the impact of acts of extreme cruelty to Australian wildlife on human populations.

This ACT Government says Isaacs Ridge Nature Reserve is important for conservation of local wildlife and their habitats..

It is the callous disregard of these residents that takes my breath away.

Spin and mischief cannot conceal these terrible crimes against the natural world.

One thing that would be worse than failing to achieve anything and to save anything, would be to stop trying.

Professor Steve Garlick tells us about how the hospital provides help to Australia’s embattled wildlife.

The poor little joeys, it is just shocking what they do to them.

“There is even more intimidation, this stuff is real, this stuff happens”. Greg Keightley

In this film in the Kangaroo testimonies series, Emma, from Sweden, expresses her dismay about what she has learnt since visiting Australia.

Manfred Zabinskas OAM and Peter Hylands discuss the circumstances that Australia’s wildlife in Victoria is now facing.

What I have always noticed, since first visiting Australia, is just how wonderful individual Australian animals are.