袋鼠是澳洲的特產，但是最近袋鼠數量大增，充斥在首都「坎培拉」，不僅在國會大樓屋頂又蹦又跳，還在市區街道上與汽車相撞，事故頻傳，讓澳洲頭痛不已。
(謝佐人報導)澳洲首都「坎培拉」最近有一個迫在眉睫的問題要解決，就是袋鼠太多了！面對鼠患，澳洲當局曾試圖餵袋鼠口服避孕藥、甚至切除雄袋鼠的輸精 管，但是都無效。當局表示，若將牠們大批載運到偏遠的牧場，費用太貴，划不來。若計畫撲殺，又遭民眾及動物保育團體強烈抗議。
根據一項民調顯示，首都「坎培拉」有八成的居民認為野生袋鼠應該留下來。但當地起碼有百分之17的汽車駕駛通報，他們至少有一次與袋鼠在街 頭相撞的經驗。這些袋鼠確實讓「坎培拉」當局兩難，體積龐大的袋鼠站起來，平均有175公分高，他們的後腳強而有力，上個月，一隻袋鼠跳進一戶人家，在房 間內及兒童臥室間跳來跳去，後來還與這家男主人摔角，最後被趕出去，房屋內留有袋鼠的爪印及牠經過碎裂窗戶玻璃時留下的血跡。
澳洲環保官員表示，袋鼠不僅讓人面臨危險，牠們也摧毀了大片孕育稀有生物的草地。去年澳洲在首都一處軍事用地撲殺了四百隻袋鼠，引起民眾激 烈抗議。現在，沒人曉得在首都「坎培拉」三十四萬居民之外，到底有多少袋鼠環繞。只是放眼望去，在首都的公園、草地及叢林山坡上，到處可見袋鼠活蹦亂跳。
澳洲有數百萬的袋鼠，牠們的皮革被列為頂極品，袋鼠肉也被輸往歐洲，送進餐廳製作成高檔肉排。但現在袋鼠殺不能殺，吃不勝吃。鼠滿為患。
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By ROD McGUIRK – 22 hours ago
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — They bounce across the roof of Parliament House. They collide with cars. They come in through the bedroom window.
Canberra, Australia's capital, has a problem — too many kangaroos.
Authorities have tried giving them vasectomies and oral contraceptives, to no avail. They say trucking them to new and distant pastures is too expensive. Now they're proposing a cull. But many people are aghast at the idea of their best-known marsupial being shot en masse in the national capital.
A government survey has found that more than 80 percent of Canberra residents think the wild kangaroos should stay.
On the other hand, in a different survey, 17 percent of drivers in the district reported having collided with a kangaroo at least once.
Canberra's latest man-vs.-roo horror story concerns a confused beast, standing about 5 feet 9 inches on its powerful hind legs, which last month bounded through a closed bedroom window onto a bed where a couple huddled with their 9-year-old daughter, then hopped into their 10-year-old son's bedroom.
The animal was wrestled out of the house by the father, Beat Ettlin, and headed for the hills, leaving claw marks on a bed and a trail of blood from broken glass.
Maxine Cooper, environment commissioner for the government of the Australian Capital Territory, says humans aren't the only ones at risk — the kangaroos are destroying the grassy native habitat of endangered species such as a six-inch-long lizard known as the earless dragon.
But "Compare that to anything furry with big eyes — the human emotions generally respond to furriness and big eyes," Cooper said.
In fact, culls are nothing new. Barry Stuart, who runs a kangaroo abattoir 220 miles north of here, shoots more than 25 on most nights with a license from the government. "You don't like to destroy them, but when the time comes, you've got to do it."
"They're a beautiful bloody animal," said Stuart, 60.
But a cull in the capital is likely to be a different matter.
Last year, during the killing of about 400 kangaroos that had eaten themselves close to starvation on fenced military land in Canberra, the protests were so heated that the killers, using stun gun and lethal injections, had to work behind screens.
This time the opposition will be no less vigorous, warns Pat O'Brien, president of the Wildlife Protection Association of Australia, whose patrons are the family of the late "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin.
O'Brien insists that, earless dragons notwithstanding, Canberra's kangaroos pose no environmental problems.
"It's disgraceful that people want to shoot our national symbol," O'Brien said. "The days when wildlife is managed with a gun should be long passed."
No one knows how many kangaroos are at large in and around the city of 340,000 people, but its forested hills, grasslands and parks make it perfect kangaroo country and Cooper says their number needs to be reduced by thousands, and urgently.
Populations began exploding after European settlers arrived some 220 years ago and felled forests into which the plant-eating kangaroos swarmed and multiplied.
The struggle to manage and control Australia's flora and fauna, native and imported, seems never-ending. Fences thousands of miles long have gone up to keep out rabbits and wild dog called dingoes. Up to 1 million feral camels introduced as pack animals in the 19th century are denuding the central desert regions.
Last month Australians slaughtered thousands of poisonous toads whose forebears were imported from South America in 1935 to protect sugarcane plantations.
The larger of the more than 60 kangaroo species have bred so abundantly in some areas that they threaten crops and denude their own natural habitat.
Government-licensed hunters nationwide shoot an annual quota. They head out at night when kangaroos are at their busiest, and often return with carcasses dangling from hooks on the back of their trucks.
The quota varies. For 2009 it's about 4 million, the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia says. Many more will be shot by farmers, who are allowed to kill them to protect crops.
The meat, once widely considered only good enough for pet food, now reaches European restaurants as steaks, and the hides make premium leather.
The public has until May 11 to make its views known. Sometime after that a decision will be made and a quota set.
The government, citing "economic, social and regulatory factors," says the carcasses will be buried rather than sold for meat.
That's a pity, says Stuart, but so are culls.
"No one likes wild animals more than I do — I'm a real softhearted old bugger," he said. "But you've got to manage them, otherwise you'll be overrun by the bloody things."
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
