Quote:
June 25, 2003

THE Australian Defence Department has been granted approval to cull a further 15,000 kangaroos at its sprawling Puckapunyal army base in central Victoria.
Brigadier Mike Hannan said licensed shooters would kill an initial 6500 eastern grey kangaroos at the military training base, 100km north of Melbourne, by the end of August.

The decision was made after a census, conducted by the University of Melbourne in April, found Puckapunyal had an unsustainable population of 36,000 kangaroos.

Brigadier Hannan said environmental experts believed the 42,000ha base could only sustain 10,000 kangaroos in present drought conditions.

He said another kangaroo census would be conducted at the end of August before a decision was made on whether more animals needed to be destroyed.

"It is our intention to err on the side of caution and not go rushing in to unnecessarily cull kangaroos," Brigadier Hannan told AAP.

"This is a highly emotive, difficult issue ... I grew up on the land myself and I understand how emotive this can be.

"The problem is one of environmental degradation - the land is overgrazed and the kangaroos themselves suffer pretty badly once all the food is gone for them.

"We don't want this area to be a dustbowl, it is not a realistic training environment."

More than 20,000 eastern grey kangaroos - many of them starving - have been killed by professional shooters at the Puckapunyal military base since May last year.

The Victorian Department of Environment and Sustainability approved the culls after the kangaroos - trapped inside a 1.8m electric fence surrounding the base - overbred and devoured much of the area's vegetation.

Animal activists have reacted angrily to the culls, saying poor management practices have led to the kangaroo population problem.

Spokeswoman Rheya Linden said there was no justification for killing more kangaroos and vowed to protest the latest cull in any way possible.

"We don't believe there is a kangaroo starvation problem at Puckapunyal," Ms Linden told AAP.

"Kangaroo numbers are severely reduced, not only because of the slaughter last year but because the drought has taken its toll as it has on wildlife everywhere."

Ms Linden said the problem at Puckapunyal was not the kangaroos but the electric fence.

"The kangaroo population is fenced in and there is absolutely no outlet for them," she said.

"If wildlife corridors were established into forested areas away from farmland, residential areas and main roads it would give kangaroos an exit point so there wouldn't be a population implosion.

"(Victorian Premier) Steve Bracks has got kangaroo blood on his hands."