Kangaroos no longer live in a natural environment. That fact carries consequences many prefer not to think about.
Before European settlement, kangaroo populations were held in check by hard constraints: drought, dingo predation, limited pasture. Life was brutal but bounded. Numbers rose in good years and declined in bad ones—quickly, through predation and scarcity, not slowly through starvation.
Then we changed the landscape. We cleared scrub and planted pasture. We sank bores and built dams. We eliminated dingoes from vast tracts of the country. We created, unintentionally, perfect conditions for kangaroo populations to explode.
And explode they do. In good seasons, numbers surge far beyond what the land can sustain when conditions turn. Without management, what follows is inevitable: the rain stops, the feed dries up, and the dying begins—not over days, but over weeks. Dehydration. Organ failure. Animals too weak to stand, waiting for death in paddocks they cannot escape.
Human intervention created the boom. Humans are responsible for what follows.
That means culling healthy animals before the feed is gone. This is what sentimentality does not accept: acting before suffering becomes visible, not in response to it.
The utilitarian calculates suffering and finds culling reduces it. The conservationist sees an artificial population requiring artificial limits. The animal welfare advocate compares a headshot to weeks of thirst. The farmer watches his land degrade. The reasons differ. The conclusion is the same.
Opposition to culling speaks in the language of compassion. Language is cheap when it ignores consequences. A preference for clean hands over honest responsibility. The natural balance that opponents wish to preserve no longer exists. Refusing to act does not restore it. It outsources the killing to drought and hunger—slower, crueller, and conveniently out of frame.
A skilled shooter with a rifle ends it in a fraction of a second. The animal is feeding, and then it is not. No chase, no fear, no prolonged decline. Against the alternative, it is not cruelty. It is the only serious response available.
Serious societies accept unpleasant duties. They act without applause when action is required. They do not mistake inaction for compassion, or squeamishness for virtue.