Page 2317 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 23 June 2010
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kangaroos; rather, an attempt to holistically manage different species in order to protect some that we know are endangered and to protect their ecosystems.
However, we all know there has long been a debate around the science that the ACT government has used to justify these culls. One of the most contentious issues that has been raised with me by those advocating against the cull is that the ACT government has underestimated the carrying capacity of our ecosystems in regard to kangaroos and has overestimated the impact of kangaroos on those ecosystems. I would like to acknowledge these concerns but say that I remain to see firm data that supports this view and that is applicable to the ACT. I am aware that people are putting their minds to this task and to building a greater body of peer review literature on such issues.
While we have accepted the position of the ACT government and the work they have done in the ACT, we encourage them to maintain an open mind about new data and science put forward about macropods, how they behave, what densities are acceptable in different ecosystems and what the options are for the management of kangaroo fertility. I ask them to do this not just because it is good practice, but because it is going to be an important part of the public debate that decision makers stay engaged on these issues, even when they have signed off on a management plan. On an issue such as this, it is not enough to say, “Well, we’ve got our plan; nothing’s going to change now.” I am not suggesting that this is the attitude of the ACT government to date; I am simply cautioning against complacency when it comes to these matters.
One of the arguments that kangaroo advocates often tell us as environmentalists is that kangaroos are not a threat to the grasslands and woodlands and that the grasslands and woodlands are much more threatened by the encroachment of urban development, the grazing of farm animals and other human threats. To take this argument to its logical extension implies that, if we let the kangaroos go and stopped encroaching on their space, we would not need to bother with any kind of culling.
I agree that threats to native wildlife and even native flora through the encroachment of human development are massive. It is the single largest threat to biodiversity in this country and has had the single most damaging impact to date. Any urban development removes habitat for the species that once lived there. This is something that has been happening in Australia since white settlement. As that urban development has continued over the centuries, we have seen the numbers of threatened species and habitats increase. We are also seeing greater value placed on those areas that remain as we become aware of the damage we have done. We must address these issues by addressing the ecological values of all species and habitats in conjunction with each other, not assessing the needs of species in isolation from each other or their habitats.
The Greens are not immune to this in any way. Indeed we have campaigned in many places for protection and retention of precious habitats. In the ACT we know that, with the new development going on at Molonglo, there are potential threats to habitats of valuable species, including pink tail worm lizards, raptors and superb parrots. My point, though, is that if you value habitats for all species, we need to campaign to protect habitats and push back against the encroachment of development on areas of value. It is no use just using the opportunity of a kangaroo cull to say that urban encroachment is bad for kangaroos. If the main threat to kangaroos is development then we need to campaign against that development on the merits of that case.
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