KANGAROO FOLLY - OR WHY SCIENTISTS SHOULD NOT JUMP FIELDS

GREENIE WATCH

Dr George Wilson of the Australian Wildlife Services has told thousands of his Australian farmers they should ditch farming cattle and sheep and start farming kangaroo in a big way (see here). The reason? - yes, you got it, kangaroos don't fart and belch methane like cattle and sheep.

That may be the case, but does this boffin really think that overnight you can ditch 12,000 years of domestication, and replace hundreds of millions of relatively easy-to-manage, relatively docile animals with wild animals? Even though he is a scientist, he is obviously one of those people I encounter often, who really have no comprehension of the scale of things. The reason cattle and sheep farming is so big is because these animals can be mass farmed - farmers have the feed, the fencing and the handling down to a tee. Introduce a new animal out of the bush, and you have to start learning and domesticating from scratch.