freediver
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http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/online/2130/fry-me-kangaroo-down
It’s just meat, okay? Get over it. If you’re really green at heart, and not a vegetarian, then you ought to think about eating Skippy.
"What?" I hear you say. "Throw a treasured native species on the barbie? How can that be environmentally correct?"
If you think about it, that question is a no-brainer for any conservation-minded person. First, kangaroos are not farmed (and may never be). They’re wild animals, perfectly suited to the dry and unforgiving Australian environment.
Unlike our imported domesticated livestock – such as sheep, cows, pigs – they don’t breed like clockwork every year regardless of the availability of the resources they need to survive. When times are tough, they wait until things get better before producing more offspring.
Not so fast
They haven’t been selected to grow fast and fat, and they are superb at conserving energy and water, so they don’t need to eat or drink prolifically like those European interlopers. They don’t leave wet sloppy piles of dung for flies to breed in, just nice, dry grassy pellets. No flies on them.
They don’t have hard hooves either, so they don’t compact the all-important humus layer of the soil, or cut up riverbanks and leave them vulnerable to erosion.
All of which means they put less pressure on fragile ecosystems, especially in the agricultural zones that have suffered so much damage since European settlement.
Second, only four of the sixty or so species of kangaroos are harvested: the ones that have boomed in numbers as a result of our provision of more pastures and watering holes. It is we who created the kangaroo population imbalance; and harvesting them helps set it right.
Conservation through sustainable use
Third, and most important, is that the kangaroo industry is an excellent working example of the concept of conservation through sustainable use (or CSU). To maintain kangaroo numbers for sustainable harvesting, you need to maintain kangaroo habitat. Roos like a nice patch of bush to shelter from the midday sun, for example, so maintaining lots of them means maintaining lots of bush.
In turn, that bush is a vital habitat and refuge for many other plants and animals – the countless birds, bugs, butterflies, native flowers, shrubs and bushes that make up a healthy bushland, not to mention the far greater numbers of unseen but vital micro-organisms that make everything tick.
Instead of bland monocultures of pasture (often sown with invasive exotic grasses), CSU delivers a more diverse, more robust ecosystem that can better withstand fires, droughts and climate change.
Everyone wins, including landholders, because resources that are sustainably harvested from natural ecosystems not only have greater ecological resilience but economic resilience as well.
Kangaroo meat: much better for environment
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2129/kangaroo-meat-much-better-environment
SYDNEY: Skippy could be increasingly on the menu following a new report that expanding the kangaroo industry would significantly cut Australian greenhouse gases.
A paper in the journal Conservation Letters says reducing cattle and sheep populations and increasing the kangaroo numbers to 175 million by 2020 would lower greenhouse gas emissions by 16 megatonnes, or three per cent of Australia's total emissions.
Greenhouse impact
The paper's lead author – George Wilson of the University of New South Wales in Sydney – said a proposal to reduce sheep and cattle numbers on the rangelands by 30 per cent should be considered.
"Sheep and cattle constitute 11 per cent of Australia's total greenhouse gas emissions," said Wilson who is involved with the university's Future of Australian Terrestrial Ecosystems (FATE) project. "Kangaroos, however, produce relatively little methane because they are not ruminants."
Mike Archer, UNSW dean of science and a long time advocate for sustainably farming Australian bush 'tucker', said that kangaroo can be promoted as a means of increasing health, wealth and happiness (see, Fry me kangaroo down, Cosmos Online).
"Eating more kangaroo has an incredible array of benefits, for our environment, for dietary health and as a tasty red meat," he said. "The soft padded feet of kangaroos are far kinder to the land than the hooves of sheep and cattle, which have caused untold damage and consequent land erosion."
Open to trying it
Kangaroos emit one-third as much methane as ruminant animals, such as cows or goats, which are responsible for 60 per cent of global methane emissions. Like carbon dioxide, methane is a greenhouse gas that is significantly contributing to global warming.
In the past decade, the proportion of Australians eating kangaroo meat has risen from 51 to 58.5 per cent, according to a recent national survey conducted by the FATE project.
Around 15 per cent of Australians are regular consumers of kangaroo meat, eating it four or more times per year, while more than 50 per cent of people have tried it (33 per cent) or are open to trying it (21 per cent).
Reducing your red meat footprint
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/1581/reducing-your-red-meat-footprint
SYDNEY: If they really want to offset climate change, carnivores around the world should cut down their meat consumption by around 10 per cent, says a new report.
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