Why Your Submission Matters

This 5-year Wildlife Trade Management Plan (WTMP) is not a conservation document, it is a blueprint for government sanctioned, commercialised slaughter on a scale seen nowhere else on Earth. Behind bureaucratic terms like "harvest quotas" and "yield management" lies a brutal reality: the systematic destruction, suffering, and terror of millions of individual sentient  animals.

Over the 5-year life of this proposed plan, commercial quotas will sanction the killing of up to 7 to 9+ million native kangaroos in NSW alone (with annual quotas routinely permitting 1.4 to 1.8+ million adult kills per year). When factoring in commercial kills, non-commercial farm destruction licenses, and the collateral destruction of dependent joeys, millions of individual, conscious animals will be shot, bludgeoned, or left to starve to death.

The commercial kangaroo industry represents the largest land-based slaughter of native wildlife on the planet. Every five years, state and federal governments quietly renew the Wildlife Trade Management Plan (WTMP) a policy framework that commodifies an iconic native species and sanctions night shooting for commercial profit.

This consultation is a critical window to lodge your objection. Making a formal submission forces the Department to record community opposition, exposes flawed population models, and challenges the institutionalised protection of a commercial slaughter industry.

Kangaroos Under Siege

Kangaroos face massive threats from multiple sources: 

• Massive Habitat Loss & Fragmentation: Record levels of land clearing for agriculture and urban sprawl, paired with tens of thousands of kilometers of cluster and exclusion fencing, continue to lock kangaroos out of traditional feeding grounds and migration corridors.

• Extreme Climate Events: Unforgiving cycles of severe drought, catastrophic bushfires, and localized flooding have devastated ecosystems across NSW, fracturing mob structures and collapsing regional macropod populations.

• Emerging Disease Threats (H5N1 Bird Flu): The arrival and spread of High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (H5N1) across Australian wildlife strains native biodiversity and threatens unpredictable multi-species ecosystem impacts.

Ignoring these environmental pressures to maintain high commercial kill quotas is ecologically reckless and threatens local population collapses.

Exposing Government Hypocrisy

The NSW Government regularly uses high-profile rhetoric about "protecting native biodiversity" and waging war on "feral and invasive species." Yet, behind this environmental branding lies glaring hypocrisy:

While claiming to protect ecosystems from introduced species the government simultaneously rubber-stamps a 5-year strategy for the wholesale, commercial exploitation of Australia's iconic kangaroos - an animal revered across the globe.

Despite a damning 2021 NSW Parliamentary Inquiry exposing wild statistical errors, zero night-time monitoring, and severe animal welfare issues, both the previous Coalition Government and the current Labor Government have refused to halt the slaughter or implement meaningful reforms. 

Submission Guide - These are the questions as set out in the Government survey

1. Sustainability of the Harvesting Regime

• Unrealistic Growth Rates: Government models claim "biologically impossible" population jumps 

• Compounding Ecological Threats: Commercial shooting ignores severe drought, climate change, bushfires, and massive habitat loss from land clearing and exclusion fencing.

• Selective Killing Weakens Mobs: Targeting the largest, healthiest kangaroos destroys weakens the species' gene pool over time.

2. Monitoring

• Up to 40% Shot in the Neck/Body: independent analysis of kangaroo heads reveal 40% showed body, neck, or decapitation wounds.

• Zero Night-Time Auditing: Shooting occurs on private land at night with zero independent field inspectors to check for wounded animals.

3. Quota Setting Regime

• Sanctioning Mass Slaughter: Over 5 years, quotas permit the killing of up to 7 to 9 million kangaroos based on outdated 1980s models.

• Ignoring Drought & Disasters: Quotas are rarely adjusted downward quickly enough during droughts or climate emergencies, risking regional population crashes.

4. Licensing Regime

• Industry Conflict of Interest: The system is designed to facilitate commercial export rather than protect native wildlife.

• Zero Public Transparency: There is no public database tracking shooter compliance, firearm re-testing, or animal cruelty violations.

5. Animal Welfare

• Horrific Individual Suffering: Night shooting from moving vehicles inevitably leads to shattered jaws and lingering wounds when animals escape into the dark.

• Brutal Joey Deaths: Pouch young and at-foot joeys are bludgeoned or left to die of starvation, exposure, or predation when their mothers are killed.

• Uncounted Casualties: Hundreds of thousands of joeys die every year as collateral damage, yet they are completely left out of official kill statistics.

6. Other Feedback

• Failure to Act on Inquiry: Both Liberal and Labor governments have ignored the core recommendations of the 2021 NSW Parliamentary Kangaroo Inquiry.

• First Nations Cultural Harm: Commercial exploitation disrespects Aboriginal cultural and spiritual connections to kangaroos as totem animals.

• End Commercial Shooting: Reject the Wildlife Trade Management Plan entirely and transition immediately to non-lethal coexistence (wildlife-friendly fencing and habitat corridors).

⌛ Submission deadline: 11.59 PM on Friday, 4 September 2026

🗨️ How to Have Your Say

• Consultation Page: NSW Kangaroo Commercial Harvest Plan 2027–2031 Consultation

• Submissions Close: 11:59 PM on Friday, 4 September 2026

1. Open the consultation using the button below.
2. Submission is via a survey  - where you can write a few brief sentences or even just a few words in each box.
3. You can use and/or adapt the text we have included above
4. This can take less than 10 minutes of your time.
5. If you have time to personalise that's great - if not all good - it's just really important for the government to know that the community cares about kangaroos and does not support this vile commercial killing industry.

Submissions close 11.59 PM, Friday 4 September 2026.

It takes just a few minutes. Every response on the public record sends a message to the government that Australians want the commercial kangaroo industry to end.

Need help with writing or lodging your submission?

Email us: [email protected]

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