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Kangaroos: The Non-Issue

Lorraine Thorne1

UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL, UNITED KINGDOM

The international trade in kangaroo skin and meat has been contested on

ecological and ethical grounds for several decades. Yet, it continues

unabated. This article reviews the constitutive practices of the kangaroo network, drawing on Actor Network Theory to provide insights into why and how this trade continues. Questions of agency, network, and space are

explored in this account, which looks at the real and imagined geographies

of the kangaroo trade.

The bodies of nonhuman animals have long been drawn into trade as living flesh,

raw material, iconic body part, and genetic assemblage. In the newly industrializing world, domesticated animals fuelled the development of international trade -

Europe readily ate Argentinean beef or tender New Zealand lamb and clothed itself

with antipodean wool. But even animals designated as "wild" have stretched the

boundaries of many empires (Whatmore & Thorne,1998). Today, wild animals are

implicated in many kinds of trading networks, encompassing not-for-profit organi- zations and commercial enterprises alike.

Social science interest in animals is relatively embryonic (Arluke & Sanders.

1996; Wolch & Emel, 1995), and analyses sensitive to the animals caught up in

trading networks are thin. In the past, this topic has been studied in ways that frame

animals as passive resources, cultural symbols, or taxonomic groupings.-' An

invigorated study of wild animals in trading networks requires diversion from

standard practice. Taking as its focus the largest trade of wild mammals in the world - the international kangaroo trade - this article offers some moves in that direction.

It challenges the fiber of the kangaroo trading network, its historical legacy, and the

spatial imaginaries that it espouses. Actor Network Theory (ANT) is employed here as a lens through which frequently ignored aspects of the kangaroo trade can

be seen.

ANT derives from studies of the social construction of science and technology elaborated during the 1980s by Callon (1986), Latour (1988), and Law (1986). ANT holds that society and nature are not neatly divisible into easily identifiable

compartments. Rather, the theory gives analytical significance to different kinds of

material forms (material heterogeneity), such as humans, machines, devices,

168

buildings, and other living organisms - thereby introducing symmetry as a key

concept (Law, 1994). Thus an actor network comprises materially heterogeneous

linkages where agency is multiply performed among various materials, although those who speak (humans) may make claims to "power" over those who or that do

not (Callon and Law, 1995). Recently infusing into European human geography

(Bingham, 1996; Murdoch, forthcoming; Thrift, 1996 and Whatmore and Thorne,

1997), ANT has offered a rich suit of "spatial metaphors," refusing "to impose a

single conception of undifferentiated space upon variable landscapes of relations

and connection" (Murdoch, forthcoming). These metaphors, moreover, bring into

view all manner of material spaces, irreducibly "real" and "present."

My purpose here is to facilitate analytic recovery of the (dis)connections

running through the human-nature "hybrid" of the kangaroo network, using ANT.

Documenting this kangaroo network reveals the discrete connections between

spaces of calculation and spaces of killing often overlooked and dismissed as

unconnected with our lives. Since the European settlement of the "great south land"

200 years ago, kangaroos have been hunted and killed as an ongoing legacy of the

kangaroo drive. The contemporary international trade in kangaroo products is an

historically specific, complex set of (attenuated) relationships between hidden

spaces, sites, and actors. Spatial metaphors help legitimate the kangaroo industry ; in particular, deployment of spatial imaginaries has tangible, material impact upon the animals' lives. The taxonomy of abundance fuels public acceptance of

kangaroo slaughter, underpinned by widespread popular images of "virtual"

kangaroo hordes bounding across a flat, virtual landscape. Ultimately, by casting

kangaroos as large, abundant "pests" now repackaged to serve the lucrative caused

celèbre of biodiversity, the kangaroo trading network profoundly delimits the

options for agency of the commercially targeted species. Kangaroo slaughter is thus s

rendered justifiable - a non-issue.

The Legacy of the Kangaroo Drive

The gradual exploration and mapping of the Australian continent by white

European explorers is reflected in place-names and statistics. Yet, the opening up of the country was a more dispersed affair: "True European exploration ... was not

done by a handful of men called 'explorers,' but by women, sealers, travellers, and

drovers" (Ryan, 1996). A siege mentality accompanied the exploratory push. This mindset kept the

new country always at bay, protecting the white settlers from experiencing the land and water, the animals and the aboriginal peoples on their own terms - projecting.

169

rather, a civilizing face onto all they encountered (Muecke, 1996).

Ignorant of the fragile soils, European settlers began practising agriculture as

at home, and by the 1830s, a major expansion of pastoralism had begun in earnest.

So great was the livestock deployment that, by 1900, pastoral lands eclipsed only the harshest desert environments (Russell & Isbell, 1986). Many plant species

perished, intolerant of browsing and grazing by the introduced herbivores (Caughley.

Shepherd, & Short, 1987). Also, from early in the European colonization, indig- enous fauna became the direct targets of hunters: "Out of the squalor of Melbourne

the diggers marched...and, casually and indifferently, shot all the wildlife they met"

(Lines, 1991, p. 91). The largest wild animals, kangaroos and wallabies, were hunted for sport.

Kangaroo drives ensued where horsemen with whips mustered the animals into

corrals and slaughtered them en masse. The cruelty of these practices was, in some

ways, an outworking of frustration with the difference of the place, and perhaps a

soothing of imperialist angst. Throughout the 20th century, a transition has

occurred from the colonial killing regimes to kangaroo programs institutionalized

through state and federal departments:

[L]arger kangaroos were seen as a serious threat to the livelihoods of the

rural community from as early as the 1850s. [The] laws at the time required farmers to kill kangaroos and many millions were destroyed. Fifty years

ago, the large kangaroos were not protected. Governments did not think

this was necessary. Kangaroos were valued for their skins. Governments

began to realize that while rural production still had to be protected so too

did the kangaroo. Commercial operations...had to be controlled [for] the

survival of kangaroos...During the 1950s and 1960s [they] passed laws to

control harvesting. Since then, a person must have a permit to kill

kangaroos (Environment Australia, Biodiversity Group, 1996).

However, while all kangaroo species were eventually assigned legislative protec-

tion, only Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia

went the route of espousing a commercial industry. In Victoria, where the natural

range of kangaroos intersects with agricultural areas, no industry operates. Neither,

in the Northern Territory (NT), where kangaroos bound among the state's grazing cattle, are the trucks and containers of traders to be found. Although kangaroos in

Victoria and the NT are not commercially slaughtered, in another state (or part of

it) the same density of animals renders them "fair game" (Caughley, Shepherd, &

Short, 1987, pp. 9, 10, 13).

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The viability of the historically embedded kangaroo trading network depends

upon continued access to bodies in quantities reminiscent of the kangaroo drives.

It also requires that a civilizing face be put upon the commercial kill of Australia's s

national symbol, which is the responsibility of Australian High Commission staff

worldwide. Further, there must be expert witnesses prepared to argue for slaughter,

overlooking the anomalies of geographical comparison. These witnesses, their

documents and devices, create spaces of calculation.

Spaces of Calculation

The kangaroo trade is a network that includes at least 32 government departments Australia-wide with oversight responsibilities for the five commercially-sought kangaroo species (Australian Wildlife Protection Council, personal communica-

tion, January 8 1997). To elaborate the killing of kangaroos, one must begin with

the less obvious spaces animated in the trading network - those of specialist calculations and discourse (wildlife service departments state-wide, the B iodiversity

Group of Environment Australia, science faculties of universities, and the offices

of consultants) - where science and management are materially practised among

people, documents, and devices. A further-flung set of actors infuse these spaces, from those flying aerial transect surveys to participants of wildlife symposia world- wide.

Kangaroo Management Programs

Ultimately, the specialist spaces of calculation deliver Kangaroo Management Programs (KMP's), which each state must prepare on an annual basis. To examine

the details of each KMP would take a long exposition. Briefly though, each KMP

is informed by a standardized division of labor for matters wild, namely with regard to the prescience of scientific and management authority respectively. For exam-

ple, at a federal level, Environment Australia's Biodiversity Group is segmented into the Wildlife Population Assessment Section (the Australian CITES Scientific

Authority) and the Wildlife Protection Section (the Australian CITES Management

Authority). The scientific authority alleges that designated killing quotas are based on good

scientific grounds and the management authority testifies that procedures are in

place to ensure program compliance. Their task is to follow the two aims of

kangaroo management set out by the Council of Nature Conservation Ministers

(CONCOM) in the mid-1980s.

171

The first of those aims is "to maintain populations of kangaroos over their

natural ranges" (CONCOM, 1985). Within a country so radically altered since

European occupation (Lines, 1991; State of the Environment Advisory Council.

1996), the natural ranges of various populations are already impaired. Forexample, studies of the distribution and abundance of western grey kangaroos and euros in

the western Australian wheatbelt have shown that kangaroo density has declined

during the past 50 to 70 years with the fragmentation of the habitat and increased

distances between remnants of native vegetation (Arnold & Weeldenburg, 1995). The kangaroos have not responded well to habitat degradation and the ensuing intensive agriculture. Yet, the 1997 kill quota for these species was 82,000 individuals.

The second aim of kangaroo management is "to contain the deleterious effects

of kangaroos on other land management practices" (CONCOM, 1985). This second

aim is rather incongruent with the first. The first aim is to maintain the kangaroos in their natural ranges, while the second aim is to mitigate damage to land-use

practices by killing the kangaroos. Since these aims are open to each state's

discretion, the scientists are relied upon to determine how many animals may be

removed from a steady-state environment via the calculation of harvest models.

However, into the spaces of calculation, there come telephone calls from interested

parties, face-to-face visits from farmers, and academic documents with details

about the "pests." During the 1970s and 1980s, these calculations favored kill

figures that paid little serious attention to kangaroos as living beings. They served

to arbitrate the practices of an industry whose conduct is woven into pastoral

occupation, whose markets are well-established, and whose advocates are of a

diverse constituency. While some nongovernmental organizations argued otherwise, the historical

orthodoxy that depicted the large kangaroos as pests appeared both plausible and

true well into the 1980s: Those who lived on the land were believed to hold an

unbiased, authentic account of kangaroo behavior, and the farming community's

position was bolstered through its traditional status as the backbone of the national

economy; the pest status of kangaroos thus explained the existence of the kangaroo

industry. By the mid 1980s, however, an analysis of literature shows a refocusing within the spaces of calculation. Queensland, which annually receives the largest chunk of the national commercial kangaroo kill quota, was already signalling its

dispatch of the damage mitigation basis to its program:

It is important to recognize that while the kangaroo industry was originally a response to the past problem caused by these animals, it has come to exist

172

in its own right as the user of a valuable renewable natural resource and thus

it serves not only the needs of the farmers but also its own interests.

(Queensland National Parks and Wildlife Service, 1984)

Dissenting voices in influential places began to appear as the decade wore on,

notably from a Senate Select Committee struck to consider animal welfare:

[T]he major driving force behind kangaroo killing at present is the

kangaroo meat and hide industry ... the Committee has not received any data on crop damage [to] justify a kill of more than 26 million kangaroos and wallabies over the last 7 years. The industry is the obvious beneficiary of such high quotas. (Senate Select Committee on Animal Welfare, 1988)

This same awareness began to permeate the scientific community as it turned to

observe the daily practices of the industry: "Wholesalers will buy kangaroos from

shooters only if they can make a profit from selling the productions. The number

killed therefore depends on availability of markets for meat and skins" (Caughley,

Shepherd, & Short, 1987, p. 207).

Recent Developments

More recently, the spaces of calculation have been augmented by data derived from

field research into the alleged competition between kangaroos and domestic

livestock. The findings of these studies undermine previous calculations showing that kangaroos negatively impact sheep and cattle. Edwards, Croft, and Dawson

( 1996) concluded, on the basis of a large-scale study, that red kangaroos in the arid

rangeland compete with sheep for food resources only under semi-drought condi-

tions. And, despite the intermittent competition, wool production has not been

significantly impaired. In South-Australia, the hill-dwelling euro kangaroos were

found to principally eat grasses, which constituted 80% of their diet in severe

droughts; sheep ate grass during the wetter seasons, but shrub in dry conditions.

According to Dawson and Ellis (1996), the reduced feed availability resulted in

diversification of food preferences, and only modest dietary overlap. However, the strength of certain logics in the specialist spaces of calculation

dies hard; Environment Australia's Biodiversity Group begins its justification for

"harvesting" kangaroos with the following:

Certain species of kangaroo are so common in some areas that they cause

major damage to farming and grazing properties. In large number, they can

173

ruin crops and damage fences. They also compete with livestock for food

and water. Landholders can lose income as a result, which effects the

whole rural community. Commercial harvesting lessens this risk at no cost

to the landholder." (Environment Australia, Biodiversity Group, 1996)

The generic farming wisdom that kangaroos, unrepentant nibblers, swarm to blight the prospects of rural enterprise, is translated here into risk. Yet, the possibility of

that risk being in some way quantifiable has been known for years. Risk, per se, was

tied up in a category referred to as the non-commercial kill, permits for which

required property inspection, the numbers of which were always a fraction of the

commercial quota. The impact of this recognition on individual kangaroo lives -

that damage may be authenticated, as opposed to being a risk - is not to be passed over lightly. New South Wales overshot its annual quota for red kangaroos in 1996,

by 24,370 animals (Environment Australia, Biodiversity Group, 1996b). It would

have required approximately one-twelfth of its approved quota in 1997 ( 134,000

animals, not l,128,800 animals) were the intent of kangaroo management, indeed, to alleviate anticipated damage, upon verification. In other words, the federal and

state governments had a working mechanism for addressing perceived damage, one

that entirely precluded the need for a commercial kangaroo industry. This illus-

trates how the kangaroo trading network has operated in a less-than-honorable way - protecting commercial killing spaces from full scrutiny and debate.

However, with the demise of the damage claim, new justifications are opera- tive in the spaces of calculation that feed into, and are supported by, various

networks articulating biodiversity. A review of how scientific and management

experts in South Australia and New South Wales have recrafted the non-commer-

cial quota illustrates this. First, they admit that the quota reflects the anticipated extent of damage to be caused by kangaroos. Second, they reassign this former, noncommercial component to the kangaroo industry. With this repositioning comes a change of name. South Australia now recognizes the category as "land

management" wherein "[t]he latter will be released only when there is an identified

threat to land management goals," as opposed to a "sustainable-use" component. (Environment Australia, Biodiversity Group, 1997). New South Wales now

acknowledges the quota as "damage mitigation":

This part of the quota will be released only when the regional commercial

quota has been used and then only based on consideration of property

inspections, kangaroo population trends, and climatic trends. (Environ- ment Australia, Biodiversity Group, 1997)

174

For some, the fact that the damage component is now available for commercial

use may provide an incentive for pitching the figures high. South Australia's land

management quota in 1997 is more than four times greater than its commercial

quota in 1985 (505,000:135,000 animals). To this rough half million lives must be

added a further 433,000 animals for sustainable use, leaving South Australia

nearing the million-body league in 1997. Considerable faith resides in the spaces of calculation when the body count for the commercial industry is sanctioned to

increase by nearly 600% in a 12-year period. An ANT approach holds this kind of

faith up for analysis, insisting that spaces of calculation are the kangaroo trading network in practice.

Kangaroo Killing Spaces

Just as the spaces of calculation extend through networks to distant arenas of

scientific foci and political foray, kangaroo killing spaces are by no means

constrained to the outback. Through body parts, purchase-orders, or containers,

killing spaces are opened in Milanese tanneries just as well. The dance of order-

placement and order-readiness make it difficult to assign, with exactitude, the point at which a killing space is activated. Indeed, from an ANT perspective, the

paperwork passing the desk of customs and excise, the stamp that authorizes the

shipment, the individual who lifts the stamp - this assemblage, as much as the raw

hides stored dockside, is the kangaroo trade network.

Further, the soccer player choosing a kangaroo leather boot for its ability to feel l

the ball, also helps to create a killing space. Purchases such as these are achieved

through persuasive sales techniques, contributing to the industry's profitability ($200 million annually). Table 1 shows the total species kill figures for 1996. This s

table reveals that (a) ideal killing spaces are accessible and (b) ideal hunted animals s

are large. Note too the geographical diversity of the kangaroos' preferred habitats.

The nightly practice of killing kangaroos follows a well-worn, routine formula - the only fanfare is the occasional truckload of illegal hunters. Four-wheel drive

vehicles penetrate the darkness using light to freeze groups or individuals. A

gunshot claps, echoing fear. Adult bodies fall to the dusty ground, often dead on

impact. Young-at-foot, hurtling into the blackness, die alone. Pouched young stunned, but not killed outright, expire with time. The shooter, most likely a part- timer, hangs each carcass - legs tied vertically, head swinging - on the truck. The shooter proceeds to the next target.

175

What is happening in the moment of each death? Each is a performance

whereby the agency of the kangaroo, in its right to be there, is being forcibly denied

by the shooter. Refuting the legitimacy of kangaroos to dwell as individuals, within

their bodies, in their places of residence creates a killing space, which profoundly violates a living space. Ironically, in its death throes, a kangaroo acquires partner-

ship with the international kangaroo trading network. This, however, is nonagency - the animal, at this point, is a corpse. But even this proscribed agency is barely visible in most discussions of kangaroo slaughter. Further, in the intimate moment

when a shooter aims for the designated zone of the gendered animal, a zone

stipulated by the Code of Practice, the bullet that issues from his gun makes the

whole network durable - every actor in the network becomes wholly accountable

for personal action - the actor network becomes a seamless web.

A Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) report in

1985, estimated that shooters kill approximately 15% of kangaroos inhumanely. In

other words, the bullet in each of these cases brought pain and suffering to its victim. It is a moot point that domesticated animals ought to be killed humanely in a

hygienic killing space. Indigenous fauna, seeping blood, smeared in dust, and

breeding bacteria, are allowed, however, to suffer prolonged deaths. At a recent

conference with multi-constituency attendance, which was organized to discuss

whether the Code of Practice is an appropriate mechanism for preventing cruelty.

176

one participant organization noted: "It seems even at a conference convened to

discuss cruelty to kangaroos, any discussion of cruelty was confined to those within

the animal welfare movement" (Australian Wildlife Protection Council, 1996).

Thus, it appears that human actors of calculation and killing have little

empathetic experience with the living, multi-sensual beings whose body spaces

they invade in the technological form of bullets.

"Oh Give Me a Home, Where the Kangaroos Roam ..."

One aspect of Actor Network Theory is its focus upon agency. With respect to

wildlife caught up in international trading networks, there is a particular complica- tion that must be recognized from the outset. It is only with the application of a

certain fraught status to a species - endangered or threatened with extinction - that

the trade of an animal's body parts becomes the subject of serious attention. At that

point, a species may be technically removed from circulation via national and

international regulations implemented through the Convention on International

Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

By contrast, while the status and distribution of species declared "abundant" is «

often routinely monitored in wildlife inventories, these animals are effectively non-

issues in the sense that trading systems created around them are assumed basically defensible. The taxonomic designation of abundance acts as a cloaking device for

spaces of calculation and killing whereby animals are (allowed to be) translated

from the wild into the commodity system. Sustained interest in the ways in which

they are networked is thus misplaced, pending default of their classificatory life-

chances.

Practically, this a serious problem with which some campaigning organiza- tions grapple, since they are often cornered into arguing over the transitional

boundary between whether a species is abundant or vulnerable. The battle is to

prove that the species in question is vulnerable to population crash, and that

management procedures are inadequate. However, the agency-through-death

linkage is ultimately unsatisfactory because the legitimate candidates for shared

concern become rare species - and the spaces of other trading networks involving abundant animals are made trivial by contrast.

If abundance is not only a taxonomic description of fecundity, but a normative

adjective hiding the practices of a complex network, it is also a license to kill with

wide public support. For this reason, consideration must be given to the spatial

imaginary of abundance as it works in the popular imagination with respect to

kangaroos.

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Virtual Abundance

The vision of kangaroos extending over a vast compass collides with a landscape shadowed by the civilizing face, which specialists in spaces of calculation agree should be removed of itinerants. This potentially implosive moment is s stabil ized by

holding kangaroos' bodies separate from a particular spatialization of the world as

a flat, deterministic, almost barren surface. In other words, kangaroos are virtually abundant, and the land is to be virtually devoid of them.

A close look at the demise of western grey kangaroos, commonly called mal lee

kangaroos in the western Australian wheatbelt, illustrates this. For the popular

spatial imaginary to hold to abundance - the land must be a flat, unchanging plane. Thus, western Australia has been granted, without widespread public resistance, a

kill quota for western grays in 1997, which is almost twice as high as that permitted 6 years earlier, despite the habitat reduction. Ignored in this process are certain

openly discussed facts:

Whether we look at wetlands or saltmarshes, mangroves or bushland, inland creeks or estuaries, the same story emerges. In many cases, the

destruction of habitat, the major cause of biodiversity loss, is continuing at an alarming rate. (State of the Environment Advisory Council, 1996, p. 5)

Perhaps these changes are not deemed significant for the animals involved because

the flat plane of the imaginary is a static entity. As Table 1 illustrates, that flat plane has mountains, forests, deserts, and scrub. Ecological niche is both specific and

discrete, and kangaroos have home ranges from which they seldom venture.

However, few are willing to highlight this difference for more or less obvious

reasons.

The conviction that kangaroo bodies are impervious and always virtually abundant, leads to extraordinary oversights. In Queensland, for example, during the 1982-1983 drought, when 70% of the kangaroo population perished on the east

coast within several months, the annual quota was not reduced, even though

macropod reproduction ceases during drought. In the same state, an overshoot of the commercial kangaroo quota has occurred in 4 years since 1984, totalling 199,525 animals. Recent material on the 1997 commercial kill in Queensland, however, suggests that kangaroos may be less abundant than the idealized spatial

imaginary presents:

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I note from the minutes of the Queensland Macropod Management

Advisory Committee of last 16 July that they are not killing very much of

their quota. Indeed, by the end of June, from a quota of grey kangaroos of

925,000 they had shot only 130,400 ... 14% of the quota; of the red

kangaroo quota of 875,000 for the year, by the end of June they had only shot 188,970 ... 21.6% of the quota; and of the wallaroo quota of 200,000,

only 52,630 had been shot ... some 26.3%. In those same management committee minutes, it also recommends that the minimum size of the skins

be reduced from 5 square feet to 4 square feet. Evidently something is

going wrong in Queensland, whereas, in New South Wales, quotas are

already taken up fully in several areas. (Jones, 1997, pp. 810-816)

Abundant kangaroo and barren landscape are therefore purified imaginings (Latour,

1993), far removed from the lived reality of individual animals sharing emotional

fellowship in their three-dimensional places of residence. The sightings of popu- lation monitoring or the statistics of harvesting ratio calculations confirm kanga- roos as viscerally separated from their dwelling places. This would fit well with the

discourse of disembodied beings contained in the United Nations so-called Biodi-

versity Convention: "Biological resources include genetic resources, organisms or

parts thereof, populations, or any other biotic component of ecosystems with actual

or potential use or value for humanity" (United Nations, 1992).

Spatial Imaginings' Impact on the Commercial Harvest

As virtual animals, kangaroos are readily acceptable, commercially viable bodies.

Increasingly, with shedding of the pest rationale, the kangaroo industry takes

center-stage as sole proprietor of these bodies, requiring no excuse on its behalf:

In recent years there have been changes in the way that kangaroos are

viewed by the rural community. Increasingly, kangaroos are being seen as

a valuable natural resource for their meat and skins - rather than a possible rural problem. (Environment Australia, Biodiversity Group, 1996)

Irrevocably, public determination to marry two essentially conflicting spatial

imaginaries, abundant bodies and barren land, is co-implicated in the success of the

international kangaroo trading network. Ironically, by this count, kangaroos will

achieve agency only if, as a species aggregate, they undergo population crash

through events such as slaughter, reproductive failure or environmental impacts

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such as droughts, floods, and diseases. At that point, they will be accorded the

divine rule of Death and Disappearance (Muecke, 1996) and claim some attention.

That is, the remaining few bodies will be deemed worthy of the right to be there.

However, as their populations have not crashed across what is called the

commercial harvesting zone, the kangaroos have failed that particular trial of

agency. As long as they fail to perform in this sense, kangaroos will remain a non-

issue in the international arena. The spatial imaginary of abundance must be

reconciled with animals' rights to dwell in space so that an animal's abundance is

not a death warrant. Such reconciliation might bring about the closure of the

commercial kangaroo industry.

Conclusion

Kangaroo slaughter has been contested on ecological and ethical grounds for

decades, although by the early 1990s the concentrated, internationally-geared

opposition faltered when Greenpeace abandoned its kangaroo campaign, appar-

ently thwarted by the spatial imaginary of abundance. The Australian government, some scientists, and most farmers achieved a discursive coup at that stage - the

kangaroo issue was assuredly a non-issue to the international community. Perhaps it is more than coincidence that, in 1992, the highest-ever annual quota was

approved, at more than 5 million adult animals. Nonetheless, several national

Australian organizations, some with international affiliation, continue to assert

how the curious, the ironic, and the simply sad are woven into the target kangaroos, who are, simultaneously, protected indigenous wildlife, emblem of the nation,

"pest" species, export product, and gourmet food.

The kangaroo network is historically embedded within a colonial siege

mentality, materially practiced as the kangaroo drive. The agency of kangaroos as

living beings is co-opted in the intimate moment of each death, rendering them

materials of non-agency within the kangaroo trading network. An examination of

the actors, spaces, and relationships making that network through the ANT lens

illuminates the hidden spaces involved - in particular, the role of spaces of

calculation, which otherwise appear disconnected from those of killing. Further, it t

is possible to see how the taxonomy of abundance and distinctive spatial imaginaries,

provide the popular illusion of ethical detachment from the practices of this

network. Through this kind of analysis of wild animals in international trade, it is

possible to acknowledge how, why, and by which means their agency is revoked

and reinstated.

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Notes

1. Correspondence should be sent to Lorraine Thorne, School of Geographical Sciences.

University of Bristol, University Road, Bristol, BS8 I SS, UK. I would like to thank Chris

Philo, Jennifer Wolch, Sarah Whatmore, Nicola Brimblecombe, and Ken Shapiro for their constructive and insightful suggestions. 2. The discipline of economics is the prime explorer of trade-related issues, dealing with ethical considerations as the option of "welfare," with organic nonhumans designated as stocks or resources. While anthropology has examined trading systems and the role of nonhumans within them, the latter are principally tokens of cultural specificity. In the

biological sciences, animals are primarily characterized by their bodily form and function, and their quantitative presence or absence at a given site. 3. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) mounted a campaign which was

reportedly successful in September of 1977 to persuade the U.K. grocery multiple, Tesco. to remove kangaroo meat from its shelves.

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CALL FOR PAPERS FOR A SPECIAL ISSUE of

ANIMAL IIIlELFARE:

Genetics and Animal Welfare

Animal Welfare (ISSN 0962-7286) provides an objective international forum for quarterly publication of peer reviewed papers on all aspects of animal welfare. Our SPECIAL ISSUE will explore the welfare implications of GENETIC CHANGE in farm, companion, laboratory, zoo and wild animals - from traditional breeding practices through to the most modern aspects of genetic engineering, while also considering the effects/amelioration of crashes in wild populations. We invite researchers and practitioners to submit: original papers (reporting the author(s) own studies); review papers; short communications (of less than 2000 words); technical contributions (reports on practical methods for assessing or improving animal welfare); or topical letters on relevant issues. Animal Welfare will not consider papers based on work which causes unnecessary pain, distress, suffering or lasting harm. Please direct submissions, enquiries, or requests for detailed Instructions for Authors to: Animal Welfare(Special issue), Universities Federation for Animal Welfare, The Old School, Brewhouse Hill, Wheathampstead, Herts AL4 8AN, UK. Tel: +44 (0) 1582 831818 Fax +44 (0) 1582 831414 .E-mail: ufawC?ufaw.org. uk. Or check out our web-site at: http://www.ufaw3.dircon.co.uk. DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: 29 OCTOBER 1998 Editor -in-Chief: Dr James K Kirkwood, UFAW, UK. Special Issue Guest Editors: Professor L F M van Zutphen, Utrecht University, The Netherlands; Professor P G C Bedford, The Royal Veterinary College, UK.