The Harvest Quota Setting Process
For any kangaroo species to be harvested, the State's National Parks authority must have a detailed management plan approved by the federal conservation department. These plans must detail the population monitoring and quota-setting controls and the controls over the take, and they must be renewed every five years.
Each year after the population estimate is obtained, each management plan will set a maximum allowable take (quota) of between 10 and 20% of total population. The populations fluctuate depending on seasonal conditions; during droughts they can decline, or they can increase dramatically during good seasons. The State's authority will then issue individually and sequentially numbered plastic lockable tags. These tags are designed to ensure, once properly applied, any tampering with them will be perfectly obvious.
Each kangaroo taken by licensed harvesters must have such a tag fixed to it and the harvester and processor must report back to the authorities on a monthly basis the details of the exact number of the tags they have used, where the tags were used, and what species, sex and weight of animal to which they were attached. The authority monitors the release and use of tags to ensure the harvest in any one area does not exceed the quota.
The complexity and detail of the controls in the management plans can be indicated by a brief examination of the NSW plan. It divides the State into 15 different zones, 14 in which commercial kangaroo harvesting is allowed and one comprising over one-third of the State in which no harvesting can take place. The population is estimated in each individual zone and a harvest quota allocated to it. An appropriate number of tags are then issued to the conservation authority managers in each zone, and these can only be obtained by kangaroo harvesters on two days of each month. The harvester must use and submit reports for all tags issued before more can be obtained, and the issue of tags by zone is closely monitored. As soon as the harvest in any one zone approaches the quota, it is closed to commercial activity for the rest of the year.
Read more about this topic: Kangaroo Industry
Famous quotes containing the words harvest, quota, setting and/or process:
“REST IN PEACE. THE MISTAKE SHALL NOT BE REPEATED.”
—Anonymous. Quoted in The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, Alan L. Mackay (1977)
“Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves,—the union between themselves and the State,—and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in the same relation to the State that the State does to the Union? And have not the same reasons prevented the State from resisting the Union which have prevented them from resisting the State?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
““Oh, let’s go up the hill and scare ourselves,
As reckless as the best of them tonight,
By setting fire to all the brush we piled
With pitchy hands to wait for rain or snow....””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)