Kangaroo Leather - Environmental Aspects

Environmental Aspects

The Australian kangaroo industry produces a range of meat and leather products from animals harvested from the wild under strict government controlled Management Plans. These ensure the harvest is sustainable and humane. A wide cross section of Australian ecologists support the kangaroo industry as being both sustainable and environmentally wise. Many argue kangaroos, which are native to Australia, are a more environmentally friendly livestock option than introduced sheep and cattle. The two most important facets of Kangaroos' better ecological fit than European agricultural animals relate to their adaptation to Australia's aridity. Kangaroos have small chest development and so require less water to breathe than placental mammals, which usually must expand a diaphragm. This means they lose more moisture in respiration. Kangaroos just make small pants while immobile and in motion expand and contract their lungs effectively using their leg muscles. The belly flops up and down, contracting and expanding the lungs respectively. Also, the kangaroo's paw is softer and does not compact the ground as hoofed cattle and sheep do. Instead, its hopping leaves very small bowl-shaped cuts in the surface of even dry clay soil, which let native grass seeds carried on the wind settle into them. The bowl shape concentrates any moisture that may fall into it into a wet point that the grass seed can use to germinate. Thus, kangaroos deplete the water table at a slower rate than cattle or sheep and would even be viable in the absence of any bore water at all. The ecological arguments for kangaroos replacing sheep and cattle as arid land livestock are compelling, though they must be set against objections of kangaroos' lack of domestication and breeding rate.