The Canberra Times is reporting that the Department of Defence is considering abandoning it’s proposed cull of Kangaroos in favour of relocating up to 100 of the little beasties at a cost of $3600 a head … This has apparently forced prominent and respected scientists from CSIRO, the Australian National University and the University of Canberra to launch the Limestone Plains Group – an organisation dedicated to ensuring that science, rather than emotional bullshit, is used to inform conservation planning decisions.
The CT reports on the logistics of the proposed move thus:
Moving the kangaroos would be a mammoth task … A padded pen would be built where the kangaroos would be darted with a sedative like Zoletil. A paintball gun would be used to mark them for identification. Medication like Valium could be administered to minimise stress to the animals. They would then be placed in a van with padded walls and floor, and air-conditioning (or heating) set to the safest temperature.
In hot weather, a fan system could blow over ice towards the sleeping kangaroos. The van would be driven to the new site, where the animals would wake in fenced areas covered in shadecloth. The whole process would take several months.
Go figure…
[Ed also got the following sent in by JD114]
From the Canberra Times website today
Roo move to cost $3600 a head
Cathy Alexander
The Defence Department has abandoned its plans to cull thousands of kangaroos around Canberra, and is now looking at trucking them to the Braidwood area.
The plan to move the ACT’s excess kangaroos to NSW will cost at least $3600 a head.
Moving 100 kangaroos would cost $360,000 and take months, according to a secret report obtained by The Canberra Times.
What? Move them down to Braidwood so they can be culled by the farmers down there?
What? Spend half a million of taxpayers funds on the most pointless exercise imaginable?
Well here’s a suggestion… why doesn’t this group trot off to the Braidwood area and organise a parcel of land where these sacred Hindu cow-equivalents can be taken, fence it securely so the transplanted roos don’t impact the Braidwood ecosystems, and then organise the move of the roos at their own expense? Then we’ll see just how committed they are to their cause.
As for the obviously semi-sentient idiots in Defence who pander to misguided feel-good sentiments about the supposed cruelty of an instantaneous end to a life, it seems that the opinions of a tiny yet vocal section of the community are seen as more important than the prevailing opinions of the vast majority of Canberrans. The appropriate authorities should simply get on with the necessary job at hand and simply ignore unwarranted wailings of a few radicals.