Credit: Rosemary Woodford Ganf
As a biologist, I take the importance of the natural world for granted and see it as imperative that we protect biological diversity from the more destructive effects of human activity. But this is not a universal view and it is still, surprisingly, quite new.
Indeed, it could be argued that conservation was not part of the mainstream agenda in Australia until the 1970s when Jack Mundey led the 'green bans' against rampant development in Sydney, and Bob Brown galvanized the campaign to stop the damming of the wild Franklin River in Tasmania.
The conservation ethos competes with other ideals even now. So why is conservation important and why should we be concerned if we push a few more marsupials to extinction?
One argument is that marsupials have a right to exist independently, and should not depend on the capricious whims of humans for their future survival. This perspective is sometimes dismissed as being too simple-minded and philosophical when humans are so clearly the dominant species on the planet but it is nonetheless compelling from both ethical and moral points of view.
To me, it is arrogant in the extreme to deny life to another species simply because it does not serve us or cannot stay out of our way.
Aussie emblems
Another argument is that marsupials are aesthetically pleasing and should be conserved because of their intrinsic interest and the simple joy that they can bring to people. Children are awed by the sight of possums, gliders and kangaroos, whether the animals are up close in an animal park or glimpsed moving about in the wild. My own daughter, Alice, delighted as a child in extracting small mammals from traps that we had set in the field and in seeing how the pointy-nosed marsupials behaved compared to their placental counterparts.
I remain transfixed at the sight of an antechinus spiralling rapidly up a tree after being disturbed, at kangaroos stirring languidly in the long grass as the sun sets and at possums squabbling in the trees outside the house. These are sights to impress even hard-nosed sceptics.
It is a short step from admiration to inspiration. Marsupials feature prominently in Aboriginal art and culture, as we have seen. And, despite their generally low profile in the culture of new Australians, marsupials still appear in enchanting stories for children such as The magic pudding by Norman Lindsay and Possum magic by Mem Fox, and in poems such as Antechinus by AD Hope and Kangaroo by DH Lawrence.
They serve as faunal emblems for the Northern Territory and all mainland states except New South Wales (whose emblem is the platypus, Ornithorhynchus anatinus, which is an egg-laying monotreme). The extinct thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) features on the Tasmanian state coat of arms, while the equivalent symbol for Australia features a red kangaroo (Macropus rufus) and emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae) supporting the national shield.
Marsupials also serve as logos for high profile companies such as Qantas and Tasmania's Cascade Brewery, as well as for many small local businesses. If you wish to establish your Australian credentials, what more recognisable symbol could you choose than a marsupial?
Medical uses
Other arguments for conserving marsupials appeal to the most utilitarian among us because they highlight how we use the animals to improve our lives or make money. This approach, while selfish, places value on marsupials and turns them into resources that we are more likely to maintain.
We have seen already that marsupials perform a remarkably broad and important range of 'ecosystem services' such as dispersing seeds and maintaining soil quality. If they are taken out of the system, we risk not just the loss of productivity and landscape function that now characterises so much of Australia's semi-arid inland but a host of other far-reaching and irreversible effects that could preclude any attempts at restoration in the future.
And we have seen that they provide excellent opportunities for us to learn about ecology, behaviour, physiology, genetics, evolution and the development of the Australian environment. Because marsupials represent an alternative path in mammalian evolution, they also present unique insights for biomedical researchers.
Currently, we are using marsupials to understand the development of the immune, reproductive and nervous systems, the expression and determination of sex in the young, mechanisms for the repair of DNA and for the processing of cholesterol and other dietary fats, how to cope with stress, and much more.
We are extracting compounds from their milk to overcome bacteria that have become resistant to our standard antibiotics and sequencing the genetic code of selected species to probe the origins of genetic diseases. The potential use of marsupials in the biomedical field is enormous but greatly under-appreciated at present.
Cold, hard cash
Still sceptical? Then let us consider the bottom line. Marsupials make money for us and, for an entrepreneurial few, the profits are great.
The tourist industry, for example, relies in part on the attraction of marsupials to entice visitors Down Under. Surveys of foreign tourists leaving Brisbane and Sydney airports by Tor Hundloe and Clive Hamilton of the Australia Institute found that nearly a quarter had been influenced to visit by Australia's unique wildlife and two-thirds said that nature-based activities were important for their Australian experience.
Most nominated the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) and kangaroos as their most popular creatures. Taking the 11 per cent of visitors who said they would not have come were it not for the continent's unique wildlife, Hundloe and Hamilton estimated that wildlife tourism contributes a very hefty A$1.8 billion a year to the Australian economy. About $1.1 billion (and some 9,000 jobs) can be attributed to the Koala alone.
Furthermore, this study was completed in 1997 – the current economic benefit of wildlife tourism is probably much higher. If we add the returns gained from the harvesting of kangaroos (over two million animals a year, yielding leather and over six million kilograms of export meat), sales of possum skins (up to 250,000 a year), souvenirs, novelty items and related products, marsupials clearly add thousands of millions of dollars to the national economy each year.
These are well-trodden arguments, but a final one has been articulated less often.
This says that we cannot always know the value of a species – or any other resource – in the future. Extinction now may mean that a future gene, drug, food, ecological process or other benefit will never be realised. We can call this a missed opportunity cost. It is difficult to value because it is hard to reliably predict where research and understanding will take us in future, and which species will prove to be of most value.
From a precautionary point of view we should therefore strive to maintain the species that currently persist. After all, extinction is forever.
Christopher Dickman is director of the University of Sydney's Institute for Wildlife research. This article is an extract his book A Fragile Balance: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Marsupials illustrated by Rosemary Woodford Ganf and published by Craftsman House, an imprint of Thames & Hudson.
kangaroo killing industry is shameful to Australia
The kangaroo killing industry is remorsefully hunting and killing them as cheap meat and skins for a few million dollars! We have devoted wildlife rescuers doing miracles with injured and abandoned joeys, but it seems that the value of their lives is less than zero for the "processors" making a disgusting living out slaughtering these gentle animals.
While we are a high-profile anti-whaling country, but actually doing nothing besides useless "talk", this abhorent and disgraceful industry exposes our hypocrisy! Bashing joeys' heads against anything to kill them is quite acceptable? How can there be such cold-blooded people in our supposedly just society? Kangaroos have been here 16 million years and don't need our "management"!
These atrocities are called a "harvest" as if the animals were an inanimate crop, a commercial product! It is bringing shame to Australia!
Shameful Kangaroo Industry?
I was interested to read the comments by " wildlife-lover" It appears some people will never be won over by a well thought out and researched argument.
Having run into many people having such extreme emotional points of view as this ( usually blinded by the emotion) I've found its pointless to argue sense with them. Indeed they are entitled to their point of view and we should honor their right to hold their point of view.
To wildlife lover and others of the extreme vegetarian / animal welfare group I would like to pose this question. If aboriginals were able to exist here for 40,000 years eating kangaroos and a whole range of native flora a fauna do you think there may be something to learn from their agricultural ( or lack of ) practices.
Why in just a short 200 years did the poms manage to stuff our environment? Was it because they tried to bring European agriculture to Australia and land that is just not suited to it?
Before you complain about "cold blooded" people in the Kangaroo industry ( I've met a few and I can assure they were all warm blooded)these people are entitled to their position just as much as the extremist on the other side. It’s the job of our society to navigate a middle path between the extremes.
Let me pose however this scenario.
Being a good vegetarian I love my Soy based products I can eat my tofu and righteously complain about all those meat cold blooded meat eaters destroying those wonderful animals. I can sit at a BBQ with my pretend sausages and glare at all the carnivores with hate and disgust in my heart justifying because I am holding an equal amount of love for the poor animals that were sacrificed for the " Great Aussie tradition"
But just what was the ecological cost of soy burger?
Well firstly we take some virgin bush and clear the native trees and undergrowth ( this means destroying the homes of hundreds of thousands of native animals and insects for every hectare cleared) yes most of those animals will die and the environment destroyed for ever - that’s ok I didn't eat that sausage at the BBQ.
Next we plough up the ground which destroys the native ground cover and the homes of the remaining insects and reptiles and marsupials that burrow, have you seen the number of dead animals left in the wake of plough? Sure they may not be as big or as cute as a Kangaroo so they don't really count, but then the kangaroos used to eat those native grasses that we have just killed off didn't they?
Anyway back to growing this wonderful soy burger that I'm eating while holding hate in my heart for all those cold blooded people that kill animals.
Now we plant my genetically modified soy ( over 80% of the worlds soy is genetically modified). next we have to spray with some herbicide to ensure that those weeds ( native plants that used to provide homes an food for native animals) don't ruin our crop.
We let it grow a while and then as we get close to spring we now there will be a increase in the number of insects so we spray our crop with insecticide to stop them destroying our crop ( opps insects are the start of a massive food chain and the ecosystem relies on then for a whole range of diverse functions) guess we have just committed ecological genocide - Oh well at least this soy burger tastes good - or is that a slight chemical taste in my mouth.
Well now its time to harvest my crop, so in come our huge harvesters to strip our crop and take it away for more chemical processing because soy is actually poisonous and has to be processed in a factory through a chemical process to make it safe to eat - but its sure a cheap food source.
Back at the BBQ I can stare at that cold blooded monster with a black heart yes that one eating the Kangaroo steak - he was responsible for the death of a Kangaroo and I'll never forgive him for it - while on the other hand I'm just eating my soy burger !
Hope this opens another level of thinking for you.
For all the animals and the entire eco system – just the cute ones!
Craig
Prevention is extremely better when there is no cure
Ecosystems are dynamical complex systems; drastically changing one aspect can have catastrophic effects on the entire system. Using either equilibrium theory or non-equilibium thermodynamics can lead to the same conclusion. Great changes to the population of a species will knock the system out of its equilibrium, so the system will change in many ways, most of them unpredictable by us. Or, such changes to a population will displace the state of the system away from the border between order and chaos, thus resulting in many unpredictable consequences. Either way, not conserving our marsupials will Australia's ecosystems. In a land that seems to be always close to climatic extremes such upsets in the environment threatens to utterly destroy our ecosystems. If so, we cannot return the environment to its previous state. Preventative medicine is much spoken about within our society these days, why preventative environmental management.
Roo Culling.
To Wild life lover - I am sorry becasue I know your heart is in the right place but you have been emotionally brainwashed.
One more point to think about - what would happen if we didn't annually cull a % of our 3 most abundant macropods ????
Millions and millions MORE of these creatures would die from one of the most horrible deaths of all - starving or thirst - as soon as even the most moderate of droughts occured.
Unfortunately we have changed this country irrepairably, we do need to manage these creatures and in fact kill them, for their own good!!
Nick. Doncaster.
commercial kangaroo killing
I am not being over "emotional". I just haven't divorced myself from the natural world, and as an adult I still have some empathy for non-human creatures. I never condemned indigenous hunting. This is on a subsistence level. Kangaroo flesh and skins are sent all over the world for a few million dollars. These animals have been in Australia for over 16 million years, and never before have they been under such pressure for survival. Governments have not catered for wildlife survival. We have developed their land and displaced or destroyed them. They are considered a "pest". Wildlife corridors should be allocated to avoid the catastrophes that are happening now, with deaths on roads and their search for water near towns. It is not surprising that we are one of the biggest killers off of biodiversity on the planet, and not many countries allow the massacres of their wildlife as large as we do. We need to clean up our foul "management" of kangaroos so we do not compromise our anti-whaling stance too. We need to learn to live with wildlife, not just use firearms as a solution to any nuisance factor land-owners may perceive.