Australia's kangaroo cull: humane and sustainable, or exercise in cruelty?

Is kangaroo harvesting an ethical meat trade or a monstrous violation of animal welfare? Science may be on the side of the shooters

In the drought-affected dustbowl of inland Australia, the kangaroos are starving. Just five years ago, the annual aerial survey of the four largest kangaroo species, conducted to assess their abundance for commercial harvest, put their combined population at almost 50m.

But now the rain has gone, and so has the feed. The population, as of 2018, had dropped to 42m. Big kangaroos are boom-and-bust species, breeding up when times are good and dying in equally large numbers when they are not. As drought spreads across mainland Australia, those kangaroos that are able to are descending on farms and competing with cattle and sheep for water and scraps of remaining feed.