Kangaroos (and wallabies)
Those who spend time close to kangaroos in the wild will find, as many indigenous people know, that they are like ourselves in many fundamental ways.
The human being who despises animals sees a kangaroo only as a hated/feared object. He tries to disown any sense of his relatedness to animals. He harbours an unconscious terror of the awareness that he, too, is an animal. He attempts to suppress that fact by killing, castrating, controlling, or enslaving other animals.
These photographs are of marsupials found in parts of the Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
Some of the animals are in protected reserves. In other areas, such as the Defence base in Canberra, they are likely to be shot. In the A.C.T., a very small land mass, about 3000 a year are killed, mainly by farmers. On the basis of acreage, this is the highest kill rate in Australia.
But 3.5 million kangaroos are shot annually in Australia for meat, leather, or fur, the biggest slaughter of a mammal on land in the world. Due to drought (global warming), fire, and relentless killing, their once high population is rapidly declining. Many animal care organisations are fighting to have the slaughter abolished, but, due to inadequate education and government corruption, far too many Australians care little for their national icon. Most Australian politicians see them only as a product. It is left to animal rights organisations and individuals (many based overseas) to fight this massacre.