SOUTH Australia's kangaroo meat industry is struggling to recover from years of drought, a ban on imports by one of its biggest markets and a licensing system for shooters heavy on red tape and fees.
With kangaroo numbers expected to leap on the back of a great season in pastoral South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland, the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia is calling for support from pastoralists to ensure populations remain in check.
KIAA president Ray Borda, Macro Meats, Adelaide, says competition for sheep and cattle feed from kangaroos will rapidly increase in the next 18 months.
"If we are really going to get ahead of the game we need to be preparing for it now," he said. "If pastoralists are serious about having a shooting program and seeing it continue and be sustainable, the pastoralists really need to put their weight behind the industry.
"The kangaroo industry needs to get closer to beef and lamb. It is never going to threaten beef and lamb because we can't do the numbers."
A lower harvest in SA in 2010 is likely to be attributed to a range of factors affecting the industry including:
* Reduced population due to previous drought effects.
* Effects of the global financial crisis.
* New meat hygiene requirements.
* Low skin prices.
* Field processors pursuing other work opportunities, such as mining.
* Low financial returns and increasing operating costs.
* Recent rain preventing field processors from operating.
* Kangaroos more evenly dispersed across the landscape due rainfall events, making it harder for field processors to harvest numbers.
John Wilkinson, Kootaberra Station, Port Augusta, said unless there was a viable industry, kangaroo numbers would not be controlled which is why shooters were vital in controlling numbers and reducing grazing pressure.
"If we have not got a viable industry, it will become our problem to keep numbers at a respectable level," he said.
He said shooting also preserves the kangaroo population so it does not get to plague proportions and drastic measures need to be taken, such as the camel cull in central Australia.
Kootaberra has had a resident full-time kangaroo shooter for six years, living on property and covering the local area.
Aside from the expected population boom, Mr Borda said SA shooters have "the toughest job in Australia" because of years of drought, limited infrastructure, greater distances to travel from towns, and the nation's highest licence fees and tag prices.
"The SA side of the industry used to be where I got 100 per cent of my product from, now it is only about 10pc," he said.
He said demand would increase for kangaroo shooters in South Australia on the back of recent good rains and good feed providing a favourable breeding environment for kangaroos.
* Full report in Stock Journal, September 23 issue.
