CANBERRA, Australia -- Authorities want to shoot more than 3,000 kangaroos on the fringes of Australia's capital, noting their growing population is eating through the grassy habitats of endangered species.
The Defence Department wants to hire professional shooters to cull the kangaroos at two of its properties on the outskirts of Canberra, where some areas have as many as 450 kangaroos a square kilometre -- the densest kangaroo population ever measured in the region.
Animal rights groups oppose the planned killing of kangaroos.
Canberra's local administration, the Australian Capital Territory government, is expected to decide this week whether to approve the cull, government spokeswoman Yersheena Nichols said.
Under the plan, 3,200 of the common eastern grey kangaroos, which can grow as big as a human, will be shot by July.
But Mary Hayes, president of the animal rights group ACT Animal Liberation, warned that such an action would earn the local government an international reputation for cruelty.
"It is a very cruel, violent way to treat animals," she told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.
Pat O'Brien, an activist with the Queensland state Kangaroo Protection Coalition, rejected the government's argument that the kangaroos risked starvation if there is no cull.
"This is just an excuse to kill them," he said.
The Defence Department said the 6,500 kangaroos at its two sites were not only threatening their own survival, they were destroying the habitat of endangered species including the grassland earless dragon, striped legless lizard and golden sun moth.
The government said on its website that there has been a population explosion of kangaroos in the Australian Capital Territory, which includes Canberra.
Officials have conducted periodic culls of the fast-breeding kangaroo, which is Australia's national symbol but also a pest in agricultural areas, eating pastures intended for livestock.
Millions are killed in more rural areas of Australia each year, but killing 3,000 kangaroos in more urban Canberra and the surrounding capital territory has raised protests.
A cull of about 800 kangaroos in the Canberra area in 2004 also brought a large outcry from animal activists.
In 2003, authorities ordered the killing of 6,500 eastern greys at the Puckapunyal military base, 100 kilometres north of Melbourne. A year earlier, a similar shooting operation killed more than 20,000 kangaroos on the base.
The final decision on the latest cull will be made by government official Russell Watkinson.
"Our concerns are for the welfare of the animals and the potential for a starvation event and also the fact that there are some rare and threatened species in these grasslands under some further threat due to overgrazing," Watkinson said in a broadcast interview.
Scientists soon plan to test an oral contraceptive developed for kangaroos in an attempt to thin their numbers at one of the sites in suburban Belconnen, according to government ecologist Don Fletcher.
"Shooting kangaroos is a violent thing that for urban populations is becoming increasingly undesirable," said Fletcher, who is developing the contraceptive in conjunction with the University of Newcastle for trial on 20 female survivors of the cull.
-- Associated Press
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