I have really enjoyed reading ‘Going Native: Living in the Australian environment’ by Michael Archer and Bob Beale (Hodder, 2004). The book promotes the commercial potential of Australian native plants and animals – from kangaroos and koalas to tea-tree oil.
Archer and Beale make an interesting observation on page 142:
“If the natural world is to have a future, we need to understand that the love of animals based on use and dependence has always led to a commitment to conserve.
Indigenous peoples who remain hunter-gatherers have a love and respect for animals, plants and ecoystems that most of us simply do not understand because they, unlike us, are still an indivisible part of the environments upon which they depend.
… Once we build the fence and climbed over it, we lost the plot and threatened the future. The mindset of animal rights advocates who argue against the value of using animals would seem incomprehensible to hunter-gatherers – as it would to the animals themselves if they were somehow able to conceptualize it. To argue, for example, as some animal rights advocates do, that a koala would rather be starving in an eaten-out forest remnant than sold to become an exhibit in a Japanese zoo strikes us not only as absurd but extraordinarily presumptuous. It seems certain to us that the koala would be as willing to chew gum leaves in Tokyo as in Taronga Zoo or Tower Hill.”
I reckon the koala would probably be happier in Tower Hill (western Victoria). But hey, if it was a question of life or death – well even I might move to Tokyo.
There is an organisation with website based on the principles promoted in the book, see http://www.fate.unsw.edu.au/ .
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
As with any movement, supporters of animal rights have a number of different perspectives, but even so that’s a pretty shallow representation of the views of animal rights advocates.
It is pointless, if not dishonest, to make comparisons with the ‘sustainable use’ of native wildlife by aboriginal people, as 99.9% of Australians are not hunter-gatherers, or have a subsistence lifestyle.
Those who push for commercialising our native wildlife suggest building economic markets for those species on the rather dubious notion that we are more likely to conserve something if there is an economic value in it. This is just as foreign a notion to hunter-gatherers as the purported views of animal rights supporters.
Developing a markete may help a very small number of species in a few specific circumstances, but one could point to plenty more where an animal having a market value has led to widescale depletion, occasionally to the point of extinction.
The flip side to this is that (1) it is of no help (and may be damaging) if a viable market can’t be developed for a species – surely the case for the majority, and (2) making a species profitable usually means modifying their environment, domesticating them and modifying their breeding – hardly helpful from a conservation and biodiversity point of view.
It also ignores the welfare of animals entirely, which goes far beyond just wheter the species will survive.
The example given that limits the life of a koala to either lifelong imprisonment in a foreign zoo or starvation in the wild is a fairly absurd one to build a policy around. It reminds me of the Immigration Minister who used to say it was better for children to be locked up in detention with their parents than be released into the community, because they would then be separated from their parents.
frying pans and fires spring to mind
Andrew, what are your thoughts on the commercial kangaroo harvest? The quota has been in the 4-6 million individuals vicinity over recent years with exports to Europe and Asia increasing. Viva and others want this stopped.
Jennifer
on a personal level I oppose it, but on a personal level I oppose eating meat all together, so I guess that’s not a surpise.
However, in a political context, whilst I still advocate a significant reduction in meat consumption, I don’t try to push my undiluted personal views into the policies I advocate.
I believe there are welfare and cruelty issues with the kangaroo ‘harvest’ which is underacknowledged, especially with the impact on joeys, and from illegal shooting (the recent tragic accidental shooting of a teenager in Victoria seems to be an example of how that is more widespread than is usually admitted). Having said that, the lifelong cruelty inflicted on intensively farmed livestock is a bigger concern in my view.
Leaving aside welfare issues, there’s no doubt that getting meat and leather from kangaroos is less environmentally harmful than cows or sheep. However, I can’t see any way that a kangaroo industry could replace these animals (unless everyone agreed with me and dramatically cut back their meat and leather consumption) – you would have to multiply the number of kangaroos twenty fold. This exposes the contradiction at the heart of the kangaroo industry – the whole industry is supposedly based on keeping the numbers of this ‘pest’ down, yet it is continually looking for opprtunities to expand, which of course relies on there being more kangaroos around to kill.
There are certainly disputes about the adequacy of the data used to justify the size of the slaughter, and issues as to whether it affects the viability of some species and the health of the genetic stock. However, whilst these are legitimate areas of scrutiny, in theory they should be managable. If the data and controls are solid enough, it is true that a sustainable number can be killed each year – how well the controls hold up in the face of an industry which (like any industry) is always seeking to expand is another question. That is one problem with the argument that the ability to make money out of an animal provides an incentive to conserve it – the natural desire to maximise the money that can be made tends to outweigh the longer-term need to conserve (leaving aside what is done to the animal and its environment and genetic charactersts) to enable the most money to be made