20th August 2012

Results of an autopsy on a young male kangaroo removed from a death pit at Goorooyarroo Nature Reserve during this years Canberra kangaroo cull has revealed that a juvenile kangaroo was shot in the mouth shattering its jaw, bashed over the head, and then stabbed in the throat causing it to choke on its own blood and bleed to death. The kangaroo was still feeding off it’s mothers milk.

According to Dr Howard Ralph, a wildlife veterinarian and Forensic Medical Officer who conducted the autopsy:

“The kangaroo was first shot, then bludgeoned on the head and then stabbed in the neck. The evidence is consistent with the kangaroo being alive until finally being exsanguinated and asphyxiated by a laceration to the throat. The kangaroo very likely suffered severe pain and distress for some time during this progressive attack, until the fatal exsanguination and asphyxiation.”

The dead male kangaroo was taken from the top of a death pit in Goorooyarroo Nature Reserve by an Australian Society for Kangaroos activist during this year’s cull at Mulligan’s Flat Nature Reserve on Sunday 3rd June 2012. Images taken of kangaroos at death pits at Kama Nature Reserve the night before by the Kangaroo Coalition also revealed kangaroos miss shot in the face and jaw and joeys incompletely decapitated.

These findings may represent the tip of the iceberg of cruelty inflicted on the 1150 kangaroos and joeys slaughtered by the ACT government across ACT nature reserves in June this year. If these shooting programs were overseen at all times by ACT conservation officers as stated by the Chief Minister in her letter to the Greens, why did they allow this juvenile kangaroo to be beaten and tortured in the most brutal and barbaric way? If they failed to shoot the kangaroo outright which was apparent by the autopsy, why didn’t they ‘follow up and humanely kill’ this kangaroo as the Chief Minister claimed in her letter was their highest priority.

Instead ACT conservation officers not only breached their own Code of Practice and the ACT Animal Welfare Act, but inflicted unnecessary, deliberate and protracted cruelty on a young kangaroo.

Download the Press Release pdf file here.