I was sitting in a restaurant tonight and picked up a copy of the Herald Sun. I read an article which made me livid:
"Joeys clubbed to death - Herald Sun - 23rd April, 2009
TENS of thousands of joeys are decapitated, shot or clubbed to death under Federal Government orders.
Decapitation or bludgeoning is demanded when a shooter finds a hairless baby still in its mother's pouch, while older joeys must be bashed or shot.
Nikki Sutterby, from the Australian Society for Kangaroos, said yesterday she believed the Australian public had no idea how many joeys were killed in the commercial shooting industry.
``Shooters will be able to kill 150,000 kangaroos in the central west (of NSW). Say a third are females and, of them, say half have a joey, that's 25,000 joeys decapitated, bashed or shot each year,'' she said.
An Australian arm of the Humane Society International spokeswoman said: ``Clubbing and decapitation of joeys is one of the forgotten cruelties of kangaroo hunting.''
The RSPCA reluctantly accepted decapitation and clubbing of joeys after twice investigating commercial kangaroo shooting.
The alternative would be leaving the joeys to be eaten by predators, or to die from dehydration or starvation."
ENDS
One can only feel as though they are banging their head against a really hard brick wall when RSPCA, which I understand is the only animal welfare body that can prosecute for animal cruelty, 'accepts' this - even if it is 'reluctantly'.
No decent animal welfare body would accept this disgraceful act. These benighted hunters subject the joeys to the trauma of having their mother killed and then they experience the same thing; their lives snuffed out in an even more barbaric fashion.
This is all apparently for commercial purposes, and those who say that if the joeys were not killed immediately they would be eaten by predators or would starve to death should realise it is the human's own appetite which has caused this vulnerability.
And I don't buy these claims that culling of animals is a good method of population control; if it was such a good method hunters would not have to keep coming back every year to do it again.
