In 2012 and 2013, I petitioned against the slaughter of kangaroos in Australia's Capital, but was appalled and disillusioned when the fervent pleas of seventeen-and-a-half thousand signatories - from all over the world - fell on deaf ears; and their anguished and/or angry comments blatantly disregarded by blind governmental eyes.

Although I had no intention of running another petition this year, Frankie Seymour's poem (below) has moved me to have yet another go at trying to persuade the ACTLA to show some conscience, and stop the heinous slaughter of our precious kangaroos.

Please take the time to read Frankie's beautiful poem, for it encapsulates the essence of the sociability of the kangaroos that the ACT Legislative Assembly is hell-bent on destroying, year after year, until all are gone.

Kangaroos at Jerrabomberra   

Mellow after greenhouse summer and April rain,

the land falls, graceful, gentle, towards the highway. 

The grass, waist-high save on the driven paths, hides them at first,

a dozen, the only ones I’ve seen in all this rambling morning.

 

They are still distant, gliding and dipping over a silent sea,

land-dolphins loping through waves of grass,

bound for the track ahead of me,

and the fence that runs down to the road.

 

Five fly over the barbed wire, it is nothing to them.

Another dips below the grass, bounds on with the others. 

Four more soar over. One more submerges, more slowly,

reappears beyond the barrier, soft flick of ears, waits.

 

 One - pint-sized - remains on the path, baulked.

The waiting one returns beneath the fence, shows him again.

 Still he is unwilling. Once more she shows him, still he resists.

 The other ten are long gone, far into the soft green ocean.

 

But no. Out of the deep grass, two return, flying over the fence.

They stand a few seconds with mother and child

on the path, considering. In my mind I hear them,

“No, he will not, he is afraid.”

 

With a kind of shrug they decide. All four

bound back into the grass  from which they came,

abandoning their purposed destination,

the mob long since lost in the distant swells.

 

Firstborn of this lovely land,

Earth children ancient as innocence.

I am weak at the knees with love.

I am desolate with grief.

 

by Frankie Seymour, May 2014 

Thank you Frankie!

 

 Kangaroos have lived sustainably for millions of years. They KNOW sustainability!

The Web of Life has been billions of years in the making and maintaining. Its delicate balance will never be fathomed by today's abstract science, yet its "experts" presume to know what constitutes ecological sustainability! How DARE they, when they know NOTHING of the qualitative interconnectedness and interdependence between life's multidimensional realms and species, and until they DO, they have NO RIGHT in interfering with nature's evolutionary constitutional integrity.

They have NO RIGHT to decree that any given habitat can support x-many kangaroos.

They have NO RIGHT to proclaim that kangaroos have no feelings, when anyone with any sense whatsoever can see that they DO have feelings; and they DO demonstrate those feelings, both between each other - as families and communities - and even between them and caring humans too. Brett Clifton's photo (above) is evidence of the love between joey and mum. Yet perhaps this little joey, and if not it, then many others like him/her, will be mercilessly bludgeoned to death this 'season' as collateral damage after their mothers are murdered in cold blood.

Only human kindness should decide their fate; senseless abstract Science and Courts have no business interfering with things they know nothing of, or ordering the murder of innocent wildlife on behalf of political expediency.

Please sign in the hope that the ACTLA has a change of heart and genuinely looks at the many other options that are available to them to deal with the "problem" of kangaroos on nature reserves in the ACT.