A California Supreme Court decision Monday upheld a 36-year-old ban on the import and sale of products made from various wildlife species -- specifically soccer, rugby, and baseball shoes made by defendant Adidas.
The decision was hailed by animal rights groups for setting a precedent allowing states to protect species that the federal government no longer deems in peril.
Meanwhile, Aussies (who apparently often serve 'roo on the barbie) are rather confused by the ruling. The formerly endangered kangaroo is now so common down under that they have an annual cull to keep populations to a managable number. So why, they ask, should California be so concerned about whether they're used to make shoes?
"I guess they are really cute. And California is a sucker for a cute animal," said Sydney native Kalee StClair. "Look at how people dress their dogs here." Touché.
Some athletes say the kangaroo-hide sneaks "add mobility and comfort," but if you want to bend it like Beckham, you'll have to go with synthetic. The U.K. soccer star (recently welcomed to America by Tom Cruise et al) swore off 'roo shoes last year due to pressure from animal rights groups and possibly his vegetarian wife (though does it count if all you're eating is lettuce and cigarettes anyway?).
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Comments View as Flat
Whiskerfish Posted 2:24 am
26 Jul 2007
Absurd & The Missing Questions
I'll guess that synthetic roo boots are more eco-unfriendly that the real ones. How much pollution goes out form the plastics manufacturing process? That said, leather tanning isn't great either.
If you're going to shoot the roos you may as well make boots - and steaks - out of them. But why isn't anyone doing a proper comparison of the enviro impacts of synthetic vs real leather? The animal rights groups make too much money, I suspect, and it's not in their interest.
Whiskerfish
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GreenEngineer Posted 2:38 am
26 Jul 2007
this is good, even if it's silly
The decision was hailed by animal rights groups for setting a precedent allowing states to protect species that the federal government no longer deems in peril.
This is a victory for state's rights, and the ability of the state to pass laws regulating things that the feds don't see fit to address. Like, say, GMO foods, for example.
The particular issue at hand seems pretty goofy, but the legal precedent is probably good news. (But IANAL so YMMV.)
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amc89 Posted 5:17 am
26 Jul 2007
Kangaroos don't need to be massively slaughtered
Leather is not an "eco-friendly" product by any means. You've got the environmental damage done by factory farming and you've got all those carcinogenic chemicals used in the processing, tanning, and dying of leather.
I wish Grist had gone more in depth on this and examined the issues behind the slaughter of millions of kangaroos for fashion in Australia. Since they didn't, I'll refer readers to:
www.savethekangaroo.com
Here's some interesting info on the damage the slaughter is doing:
"Other justifications for the kill are that kangaroos are pests who destroy wheat crops and compete with livestock for grazing. The largest study of kangaroos ever conducted, carried out by the University of New South Wales, found that the presence of kangaroos has no negative effects on sheep farms whatsoever. A study carried out by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation found that 95 per cent of wheat crops are never visited by kangaroos and furthermore, Gordon Grigg, one of the most avid supporters of kangaroo slaughter and author of Commercial Harvesting of Kangaroos in Australia, the kangaroo industry's bible, recently stated that kangaroos' grazing requirements may have been over-estimated by as much as 500 per cent.
In some areas kangaroo populations may build up in order to withstand the regular droughts which can wipe out half the population. The kangaroo massacre destroys the process of natural selection as the largest and fittest animals, the `alpha' males, are targeted. These animals are the ones who, ordinarily, would be the most likely to survive a drought. As they have been repeatedly picked off, the kangaroos who are left to breed are smaller and younger animals, causing the gene pool to be weakened. According to Dr Ian Gunn of the Animal Gene Storage Resource Centre of Australia, "...the continued slaughter of kangaroos has the potential to cause the extinction of a number of remaining species".
Six species of kangaroo are already extinct, with four more species extinct on the Australian mainland and 17 species listed as endangered or vulnerable. Red kangaroos are particulary at risk. They are now being killed at a rate three times higher than they are reproducing. In the 1960s their average age was 12, today it is two.
Despite a big drive by the industry to popularise kangaroo meat for human consumption, most of it is still used for pet food."
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Craig Allen Posted 1:40 pm
26 Jul 2007
Pro(ish) kangaroo harvest point-of-view from Oz
I see kangaroo harvesting as a means of improving nature conservation & land management in Australian landscapes. But as currently implemented the industry is flawed.
I grew up in a pioneer family on the Eyre Peninsular. My great grandparents, grandparents, parents and most of my extended family lived their lives carving farms out of the mallee bush which is characteristic of this area and much of southern South Australia. My father alone cleared about ten thousand acres of mallee woodland. As a kid I became interested in ecology and conservation through seeing and catching the amazing variety of reptiles, birds, insects and marsupials and other mammals creatures that appeared when dad was bulldozing the bush. Some time around the age of eight I decided that I was less than impressed with the family business and eventually ended up studying ecology at university, and have worked in the conservation sector all my adult life.
So, here are a few observations and thoughts:
- In some seasons, kangaroos were a very real problem on our farm. I have seen mobs of 50 or so of them that emerged from bush adjacent to wheat or barley paddocks to graze. Dad's solution : grain laced with strychnine. I shudder to think what else was killed - parrots, other marsupials, eagles, crows etc feeding on the carcasses etc.
- Some of the more common species (some of which are harvested) have biologies that allow them to rapidly increase in population in good years. The populations then crash in drought years.
- Farmers have cleared vast areas of natural ecosystems and continue to do so in order to plant crops and graze stock. This will continue. Even though the era broad-acre clearance is coming to a close, a less obvious degradation of natural ecosystems still occurs through the grazing of the woodlands and grasslands by stock, a practice that slowly kills of the undergrowth and prevents regeneration.
- In drought years, vast areas of Australia's agricultural lands that have been cleared of all native vegetation effectively become Sahara-like desert, wracked by dust storms.
- In a holistic sense, the loss of native vegetation is a far greater threat to native species than is the harvesting of the more common native species.
- Most species of kangaroos and wallabys are totally protected.
- If farmers were able to make a living from kangaroos, they would in theory be able swap at least some of their enterprise away from domestic stock, thereby reducing their impact on the landscape and ecosystems.
- Currently the industry is not structured in a manner that enables this to occur. Landholders generally receive no direct income when roos are harvested from their land.
- In areas and at times where there are high populations, then farmers are given a licence to cull if there is no harvest by professional shooters. The carcasses are then left to rot.
So:- In theory, I support the concept of the harvest of some species of kangaroo, under strict controls including quotas that are set according to population monitoring.
- However, as currently structured, I believe that the industry does not provide the incentives that are required in order to achieve the positive conservation outcomes that are needed.
We are currently seeing a debate about abandoning some areas of the southern agricultural regions of Australia as greenhouse kicks in. It is being proposed that agriculture will then be moved to the northern subtropics of the continent, which are still largely natural although somewhat degraded in some places through grazing by introduced stock. If this occurs we will see vast areas of natural landscape cleared and ploughed under. It would be far better if we could find ways to sustainable use our landscapes such as through harvesting native fauna, rather than eliminating it in favor of introduced crops and livestock.It saddens me to think that instead of clearing all that beautiful bush, my family could have found a way to perhaps clear perhaps only half of it and to instead make a living from looking after the rest and harvesting the roos rather then poisoning and shooting them as pests. It really burns me up to know that the process continues when a better way is known. It perplexes me to think that people, who claim to care, are actively working against the development of a way of living with the land that preserves habitat, flora and fauna rather than eliminating it.
An a final note on the animal suffering: I won't go into details here, but I am absolutely convinced that meat production through kangaroo harvesting is more humane than through sheep production. And there is no way known that we are going to convince everyone to become vegetarians any time soon.
Some further reading
"The FATE vision is to incorporate alternative forms of land-use into the landscape mosaic of rural Australia that combine production and conservation through the commercial use of native species."
NB: I have nothing to do with them - I just mostly agree with them.
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