Animal keeper Jessica Dick with a kangaroo at Wild Life Sydney Zoo, Australia. Photo: dpa
Dot energetically hops through the enclosure. It’s easy to see where the name comes from: A small dark spot on the fur beneath her right eye.
Part of a group of six females, the seven-year-old kangaroo leads a good life in Sydney’s Wild Life Zoo. The kangaroo is trusting, greedy and simply extremely cute, staring at the visitor with her large gentle eyes.
Born in the wild, life has certainly changed for Dot, who barely escaped death when her mother was hit by a car on Kangaroo Island, off the southern Australian coast.
“Dot was inside her pouch at the time and was largely protected from the impact,” recalls Jessica Dick, a keeper at the zoo in Sydney’s famous Darling Harbour neighbourhood, with a soft spot for kangaroos.
A passer-by noticed the baby kangaroo and alerted the authorities.
Dot had to be raised by bottle and could no longer be released into the wild, Dick says.
“Her story is one that is shared with many other rescue animals living in wildlife parks around Australia,” she explains, while handing out sweet potato snacks to Dot’s gang.
“I don’t know anyone among my friends and relatives who hasn’t run over a kangaroo - including me,” says Louise Anderson, who lives near Melbourne.
According to estimates, there are at least twice as many kangaroos in Australia as inhabitants – which would be a total of 50 million animals.
While the country is certainly big enough, Australians’ relationship with their national animal is one of the love-hate variety.
“Kangaroos are Australia’s national icon and are known around the world as being quintessentially Australian,” says Mick McIntyre, director of the award-winning documentary Kangaroo – A Love-Hate Story. However, the fact that most Aussies have ambivalent feelings towards the animal is less widely known, McIntyre says.
The film shows how thousands of kangaroos are shot dead every night – illegally, since killing, buying, selling, or owning the animals is banned in Australia.
In order to keep the large population under control, the government hands out licences permitting the culling of kangaroos. But millions of animals are also killed each year regardless of permits, according to estimates.
Kangaroos are being exploited commercially “with no regard to the kangaroos’ place in the ecology of this continent, and no regard for their welfare,” says McIntyre.
“The pressure from the commercial kangaroo industry (supplying meat and skins to Europe) is decimating the populations and inflicting barbaric cruelty on them every night.”
Kangaroos often feature on the logos of Australian sports teams and companies, like that of Australian airline Qantas, but “the kangaroos are also victim to the largest land-based wildlife slaughter in the world”, says McIntyre, who, together with his partner Kate, researched the issue for years before making the documentary.
A short walk through Sydney’s The Rocks district shows just how much the animal is being marketed for commercial purposes: One vendor offers kangaroo fur, next to a stall selling purses and handbags made from kangaroo leather.
Restaurants from Adelaide to Darwin have kangaroo steak and ‘roo burgers on the menu. According to McIntyre, it’s a “national disgrace” that kangaroo meat and skins are being used for luxury goods, pet food and high-end restaurants.
Totem to the aboriginal people
During the shooting of his film, the team concluded that the lack of respect for the kangaroo goes back to the colonial era, when many of the white farmers started to perceive the herbivores as a threat to agriculture, says McIntyre.
However, kangaroos have populated the continent for 25 million years, and Aboriginal Australians venerate the animal as a totem.
“This is their land,” says Max Dulumunmun Harrison from the Yuin people in the documentary. “They are part of our ceremonies.”
There are four main kangaroo species: The largest red kangaroo, the eastern grey kangaroo, the western grey kangaroo and the antilopine kangaroo. The males can grow up to 2m tall and weigh some 90kg.
With jumps of up to 8m, kangaroos can reach a hopping speed of 65kph, with the tendons of the hind legs functioning like springs. Meanwhile, the animal uses its large tail to maintain balance.
Kangaroos are usually not dangerous, as long as they don’t feel threatened, says Dick, though that also depends on the species.
This year, there have been repeated reports of kangaroos attacking humans in residential areas.
Female kangaroos nurture their young for about a year. When they’re six weeks old, they only measure the length of a human thumb and are completely naked – hard to imagine they will turn into mighty creatures within a few years.
Filmmaker McIntyre has also founded an animal welfare organisation called Kangaroos Alive. “We are now advocating for Australians to learn to co-exist with the kangaroos, to appreciate their place on this land – not just as sports mascots or company logos,” he says.
Because kangaroos, the activist believes, are Australia’s rightful national icon and a true wonder of evolution. – dpa/Carola Frentzen
