21/05/2026
At the ADO we share community concerns about the animal welfare implications of the annual kangaroo culls, as shown by this recent advertisement in a local city publication. The image in the ad may be of a juvenile kangaroo who has been decapitated or has had their head bludgeoned or shot off during the cull. The fact that the publishers felt the need to pixelate the image, presumably due to its graphic nature, speaks volumes about the violence inflicted on these sentient native animals. From a legal perspective, an important question is whether such brutal actions are legal? The code of practice for non-commercial kangaroo shooting (ie not part of a commercial ‘harvest’ of kangaroo bodies) states that young kangaroos still in the pouch must be killed by a ‘single forceful blow to the base of the skull’ or ‘stunning, immediately followed by decapitation’, and that juveniles just out of the pouch must be killed by a ‘single shot to the brain or heart’ (p 13). BUT, the culls are not monitored at the point of kill, so what if the young animals were killed by MULTIPLE blows to the head, or decapitated WITHOUT stunning, or shot MULTIPLE times in the head or heart, ALL of which would constitute a breach of the code and therefore animal cruelty under ACT law. That is the problem – we simply do not know. So we agree with the advertisement that no one can call the kangaroo cull ‘humane’, and we encourage people to voice their concerns to their elected representatives as suggested by the ad. Of course, ethically speaking, inflicting gratuitous violence on sentient animals should NEVER be tolerated in a modern civil society. The ACT clearly has a long way to go before it can claim to be such a society when it comes to how it treats its local native animals.
For more on the culls see Save Canberra's Kangaroos
