I’ve always been fascinated by kangaroos. As a child on motoring holidays on the south coast of New South Wales, I’d constantly scan the countryside for them. It wasn’t until I was about 10, when the family camped by the beach at Huskisson, that I saw my first wild kangaroo.

These days I need only to stroll around the golf course at Hepburn Springs to feast my eyes on large mobs of roos lolling on the greens. It’s a roo spotter’s heaven. 

Warning: the following might be offensive to vegetarians… and to kangaroos.

In the October issue of Australasian Science, ecologists George Wilson and Melanie Edwards put forward a case for replacing the farming of sheep and cattle in Australia with kangaroo farming.

George and Melanie argue that ruminant livestock generate large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. A staggering 11 per cent of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions come from cattle and sheep. 

Kangaroos, on the other hand, don’t burp methane because their guts contain different micro-organisms to help them digest food. Another bonus in farming kangaroos over traditional grazing animals would be that hoof-damaged pastures would re-generate, as would much of our natural vegetation. 

David Thomason of Meat and Livestock Australia is reported to have said in response to this suggestion: ‘The amount of meat yield that you get from cattle is about 10 times what you get from a kangaroo.’ He has a point.

But the redoubtable George and Melanie have already considered this. They’ve even come up with a mathematical model, for the period 2007 to 2020, to illustrate the feasibility of their proposal.

Kangaroos graze on the rangelands that cover about two-thirds of Australia and they currently share these with sheep and cattle.  

George and Melanie’s model shows that 200 million kangaroos could be sustained on these rangelands, but only if cattle numbers were slowly decreased from 7.5 million to 0.5 million, and sheep from 38.7 million to 2.7 million.

That number of roos, they say, would provide well in excess the quantity of meat that sustainable numbers of sheep and cattle could provide over the same area.

They then adjusted their model to show the result of grazing fewer kangaroos.

By removing the same numbers of sheep and cattle as in the earlier model, and allowing the kangaroo population to increase to 175 million, net carbon savings by 2020 would be 16 megatonnes of CO2equivalents (CO2 equivalents are the units used by the Kyoto Protocol to measure greenhouse gases). These savings, they say, would represent 28 per cent of agricultural emissions.

With beef and lamb prices set to rise in line with emissions price rises, pork, chicken and kangaroo are likely to play a major role in the Aussie meat-eater’s diet.

George and Melanie say that while current prices for kangaroo products are lower than those for cattle, sheep and wool, farming kangaroos would eliminate costs for fences and yards as well as for parasite control, shearing, crutching, purchasing stud rams or bulls, branding, dehorning and castrating.

Furthermore, they say that kangaroo harvesting would be more humane than the slaughter of domestic livestock because – unlike cattle and sheep that are trucked off, traumatised, to abattoirs – kangaroos would be shot in the field.

The authors state that ‘Livestock grazing has contributed to the extinction of at least 20 species of mammal [in Australia], and threatens around one quarter of the plant species listed as endangered.’

I received an email last week from a group calling for a moratorium on kangaroo killing. The email states that according to the Murray Darling Report, kangaroo population densities across most of New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland have fallen to less than five kangaroos per square kilometre. The Report states that the kangaroo in these areas is now ‘quasi extinct’.

‘Quasi extinction’ is a state defined by the Murray Darling Report as ‘the nominal value of kangaroo densities taken to be the effective loss of the species.’ According to the Report, this reduction in kangaroo numbers would result in the demise of the kangaroo industry.

One way of ensuring the survival of the kangaroo is to farm it.

But managing a mob and claiming ownership of it would be difficult because roos tend to migrate to find the best pasture, especially during drought. It’s also likely that the many farmers who regard them as pests would shoot them on sight.

To counter these difficulties, George and Melanie have suggested that regional collaboration and landholder cooperatives are the keys to bringing independent livestock producers and kangaroo harvesters together.

If eating one of our iconic wild animals is abhorrent to you, consider this: The numbers of the springbok in South Africa, the red deer in Scotland and the bison in the USA were all in decline. All are now farmed for meat and their populations have increased.

According to the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia, kangaroo meat has more protein, less fat, less cholesterol and higher levels of iron than most other meats.

But while farming kangaroos for meat might help save the planet, it would be an extremely foolhardy government who diminish the wool industry, especially as it’s served this country well for so many years. 

I have a few problems with the notion of farming kangaroos, not the least of which is that I imagine it would be a lot like herding cats. Except kangaroos bounce more.