Why You Should Eat Kangaroo

Win 1: Ecological restoration

Although kangaroos are a native species, they now pose a massive ecological problem. While many natives have fared terribly since colonisation—Australia has the highest mammal extinction rate on the planet—kangaroos are one of the winner species of colonisation, along with noisy miners and bell miners. Kangaroos have high fertility and reproductive success, and they increase rates of reproduction in response to good seasons. Cleared landscapes, improved pastures, and regular watering points have essentially created a perpetual good season.  As a wide-ranging herbivore, kangaroos have evolved with high predation rates by top end predators such as dingoes and harvesting by First Nations people. Colonisation has removed both of those controls on kangaroo numbers. 

In most parts of Australia today, kangaroo numbers are so high that they exert a massive grazing pressure that the fragile Australian landscape cannot bear. The scale of the problem is hard for urban people to imagine, so let me give you a concrete example. On one fragile rangeland ecology in WA (Wooleen Station), it has been estimated that the natural carrying capacity of that area would be approximately 20 000 kangaroos. With the introduction of permanent watering points (for cattle), kangaroo numbers boomed and were calculated in 1990 to be around 4 million, twenty times what the land can bear. 

This kind of grazing pressure provides one of the primary obstacles to desperately-needed ecological restoration. In the months preceding writing this article I asked a number of conservation land managers what level of challenge kangaroos presented to their work: all placed them near the top, along with the worst invasive species in their area. One told me of kangaroos destroying 80% of a biodiversity planting in Victoria; another told me of kangaroos denuding a desert habitat in SA that is home to important species such as the desert mouse and fat-tailed false antechinus. 

Tragically, kangaroos now represent a contributing pressure to our appalling native mammal extinction crisis. Localised studies by ecologists everywhere confirm this, but somehow it has not reached our national consciousness, and instead, talk of controlling kangaroos provokes the kind of shrill opposition mentioned above. Why? Simple: misguided sentiment. Kangaroos are known worldwide, and are rightly loved and admired. But hardly any Australians have heard of a fat-tailed false antechinus.

Whether or not we eat kangaroo, most regions of Australia desperately need kangaroo numbers to be culled way beyond what is currently happening. The ‘65 000 bullets raining down’ feared by the Castlemaine animal rights activist refers to a Victorian Government culling target for the Central region. An ecologist explained to me that this represents one kangaroo culled per 28.7 hectares – not even a fraction of what is needed. And if we need to cull them anyway, we should be eating them, otherwise we are wasting a massive food source.

Ultimately, however, no human culling can ever be enough. What is also desperately needed is to stop culling Australia’s apex predator—the dingo—and let them do their thing. But that is a subject for another article.

Win 2: Climate change

By eating a lot more kangaroo we support efforts at ecological and biodiversity restoration, which also helps restore landscape hydrology. As well as benefitting healthy ecosystems, this massively increases the landscape’s ability to store carbon, whether in trees or grasslands. As well as banning any new fossil fuel projects, increasing carbon stored in our landscapes is the big shift Australia needs to make in order to support both climate change mitigation (reducing atmospheric carbon) and adaptation (coping with the climate change that will happen).

Eating kangaroo contributes no extra carbon to the atmosphere (beyond the transport needed for any food) and kangaroo production and consumption tends to be more localised than many other foods on our supermarket shelves. Most importantly, eating kangaroo provides a perfect carbon-positive substitute for that notoriously carbon-negative meat: beef. (See cooking tips below.) (To be clear, I do think that beef can make a legitimate and carbon-positive contribution to our food system, but this requires a transition to regenerative methods that are still the exception to the rule.)

Win 3: Food system sustainability

Following on from the last thought, by culling and eating much more kangaroo, we provide a triple-whammy benefit to the sustainability of our food system.

Not only is kangaroo grazing pressure a problem for ecological restoration, it is a massive problem for farmers and graziers. Indeed, on many sheep and cattle properties in Australia, kangaroos are grazing more than half the feed. This is a primary reason many graziers give for never resting their paddocks: if they do, whatever grows will just be eaten by kangaroos. This leads to the cycle of denuded paddocks, loss of soil hydrology, and erosion that has been so disastrous in Australia.

Similarly, kangaroos can have a big impact on cropping, both through grazing and trample damage. This reduces the amount of food produced by each hectare of land. By reducing the damage of kangaroos, we both increase the productivity of existing farmland, and we assist the uptake of regenerative farming methods, which is what is badly needed for the sustainability of our food system.

Thirdly, by culling and eating much more kangaroo we can make a substantial increase in the amount of protein supplied to the human food system by the Australian landscape—with no extra ecological cost—and hopefully reduce the demand on other forms of protein, which do come at an ecological cost. If you are vegetarian or vegan and begin incorporating kangaroo protein into your diet, then you reduce the number of acres required to support your individual consumption and all the associated ecological costs that come with cropping.

Win 4: Animal welfare

The primary objection to culling and eating kangaroo comes from animal rights activists. Animal welfare remains a huge problem in our modern industrialised food system, from the close penning of animals and inappropriate feed to the transport of live animals to the slaughter process at abattoirs. It is animal rights campaigners who have provided the vital service of bringing these issues before the public.

Unfortunately, on the subject of kangaroos they have gone badly astray. This is largely due to a failure to think about animals in the context of natural systems, and perhaps also an element of culture wars blinkering. (And probably also because they’re cute.)

Picture this: a mob of roos is eating native grasses from a paddock/grassland in the Campaspe downs. To one side, the hilly paddock curves down to the valley of the Campaspe River; on the other side, a golden dawn emerges over a hilltop wooded with grey box and ironbark. A large male roo casually straightens from grazing, takes in the beauty of the vista (does he admire it?), absently scratches his belly, then… 
Then nothing. Most of the mob hardly notice one of their number flop to the ground, and make nothing of a muffled pop sound in the distance.

This is kangaroo harvesting. For an animal that has evolved to be preyed upon—one that ecologically requires predation—it is hard to imagine a better way to go. No terrifying chase by a pack of dingoes, followed by a horrific mauling, no painful spear that takes minutes (and perhaps more spears) to have its effect. None of the terror experienced by chickens, sheep, pigs, and cattle being transported to an abattoir where they can smell the blood of their companions.

I think one of the prejudices against kangaroo culling is that it involves guns, which means ‘shooters’. Since the Howard Government gun buy-back after the Port Arthur massacre, Australians have rightly been proud of our gun control. Unfortunately, however, a culture wars casualty of this effort has been the easy caricaturing of all gun users as untrustworthy rednecks. This fails to understand the important role that qualified shooters play in regional Australia.

In Victoria, kangaroo culling and harvesting is tightly controlled through the Game Management Authority. Accredited harvesters must demonstrate repeated proficiency of a headshot at 100m, first on a target range, and then supervised in the field. (They must also pass food safety requirements.) These are not simply ‘shooters’; they are marksmen. To make a good income they must be as clean, precise, and efficient as possible. Their own interests align completely with animal welfare concerns.

Moreover, kangaroo culling/harvesting is necessary for the very sake of kangaroo welfare. The tragedy of exploding kangaroo numbers is that once conditions change from wet years to dry (as they are now), with no predators at hand, kangaroos begin to starve en masse. This is a terrible sight. The conservation manager from the SA property mentioned above told me that after this last dry year, they have had to shut the property to the public because of the terrible scenes of kangaroo starvation. 

I see this when I go walking in the bushland near our house, as well as a terrible condition called ‘phalaris staggers’. This results when the kangaroos are forced by hunger to eat a certain invasive grass species (Phalaris) that contains toxic alkaloids, bringing on a kind of Parkinson’s Disease for roos. They get muscle tremors, stagger erratically, struggle to swallow, and eventually die a very slow unpleasant death. Kangaroos need us to control their numbers for their own sake.

Win 5: Bush food #1!

Since colonisation, Australians have failed spectacularly to adapt our diets and our food systems to the ecological conditions of this continent. With the marginal exception of macadamia nuts, there is no native food that makes a significant contribution to our food system. There are ongoing efforts to try and commercialise grain harvesting from kangaroo grass and some wattle seeds, but these are still a long way off. 

Meanwhile, we have in front of us one of the most important bush foods of the First Peoples of this continent, one that is easily adaptable to modern diets and available in quantities to make a significant contribution to our food system, all with ecological benefit! It is a low-hanging fruit, if ever there was one, and yet it is being held back by some mis-placed culture war politics. How much better if a healthy market for kangaroo meat could be turned to remunerate the culturally significant activity of kangaroo hunting for many traditional owners? Wake up Australia.

Win 6: Human health

Here I will be lazy and simply quote from the Sustainable Table website:

Kangaroo is a lean meat with less than 2% fat, making it a healthier red meat option. It is also high in protein, essential B vitamins, minerals such as zinc, iron and omega 3 fats and omega 6 fatty acids. Compared to beef, kangaroo contains double the amount of iron and triple that of chicken and pork. Eating wild meats such as kangaroo is also better for your health as you can be sure there are no added growth hormones, antibiotics or chemicals.

And it is cheaper than beef!

You should be eating kangaroo.

If you eat meat, you should be eating kangaroo. In many cases, you can simply swap it in for beef. We don’t really eat steak in our house, but any dish that involves beef mince or beef stir fry we do with kangaroo. Guests never know the difference unless we tell them. This is by far the most sustainable form of meat you will ever find. 

If you are vegetarian or vegan, you should still eat kangaroo. Since they must be culled anyway, not eating does not prevent an animal from dying. Eating, on the other hand, prevents a massive waste of food and provides a cascade of other ecological and food system benefits, as argued above. Perhaps it also helps us take small step in reducing the disconnection of the urban consumer from natural landscape upon which we depend. Rarely are there such win-wins in a food system.

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Tips for eating kangaroo

• Substitute kangaroo mince for anything that uses beef mince (eg. bolognaise, lasagna, shepherds pie). No tips needed!
• Stir fry and steak: slice thin and cook fast and hot. Don’t overcook. Use the same marinades as with beef.
• Curries and roast: cook low and slow. In a curry, best to add some fat early to prevent it drying out (vege oil, cream, or yoghurt) as roo meat is so lean. (I haven’t yet done a kangaroo roast, but I have been assured it can be good.)