Kangaroo leather given boot by Nike, industry bounces into action

Australia’s commercial kangaroo industry says animal activists have misunderstood population issues with “not one kangaroo killed for leather”.

The Australian commercial kangaroo industry has expressed disappointment that “some animal activists fail to understand animal welfare” while possessing disproportionate power to influence commercial and political decision-making.

The comments follow this week’s announcement by sporting goods multinational Nike that it will swap kangaroo leather in its footwear for synthetics by the end of this year after a long campaign by animal advocates.

The German-based Puma announced two weeks ago that it was also bouncing roo leather.

Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia executive officer Dennis King said leather did not underpin the industry and Nike’s decision was “not going to change the number of kangaroos culled or harvested” due to government harvest quotas.

But he was concerned that it could jeopardise its larger markets.

A kangaroo bounces along a farm fence. Picture: Peter Lorimer

Mr King said a KIAA delegation would travel to the US next month hoping to “balance the emotive misinformation targeting US politicians” from activist groups with industry stakeholders, legislators and the general public.

Oregon, where Nike is headquartered, and Connecticut are considering legislation prohibiting the sale or commercial exchange of kangaroo products. Californian authorities did so several years ago. Proposed federal legislation seeking to ban the sale of kangaroo products across the US is also gaining cross-party support.

The real value of a kangaroo carcass is not its skins but meat for human or pet consumption, while kangaroo hides were once tipped into landfill before the meat industry by-product was used to make high-value leather products.

More than 3000 people are employed in Australia’s $200 million commercial kangaroo industry with the EU providing the biggest of about 60 overseas markets, importing about $130 million worth of meat and leather a year.

Belgium alone accounted for 775 tonnes, or about a third of the total, in 2019.

The EU and Australia and currently negotiating a free-trade agreement that would likely include kangaroo products. The US is the second biggest international customer.

“There is no one over in the US to stand up for our industry, no one for people to go to for balance,” Mr King said.

“Not one kangaroo is killed for leather, conservation culling would still be used to manage populations, it has nothing to do with skins or meat. They will be shot anyway.

“We are a tool of governments, which have programs to keep kangaroos at a sustainable level and to minimise the cycles of boom in wet seasons, when populations rise, and bust in drought when they run out of feed and water and die horrible deaths.

“The thing that hurts the most is that animal welfare is at the centre of everything we stand for and the activists want to subject these animals to a terrible outcome.”

Harvesters must abide by a national code of practice for the humane shooting of kangaroos and wallabies for commercial purposes and all meat and leather products are traceable. According to the federal Department of Agriculture, all state-managed harvest of kangaroos and wallabies for export must have an approved management plan under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999(EPBC Act).

The plans are based on annually reviewed harvest quotas, with the commercial industry given an approved allowable quota limit that can be taken, usually linked to market demand and production capacity. Harvesters in recent years have taken only about 3 per cent of the estimated 40 to 50 million kangaroos in Australia.

The department said there had been no adverse long-term impacts on kangaroo populations after four decades of commercial harvesting management.

Nike will stop using kangaroo leather in all its footwear products by the end of this year following a long campaign by animal welfare advocates. Picture: Supplied

In a statement, US activist group Kangaroos Are Not Shoes said Nike’s decision was “closing a chapter on cruelty” and compared kangaroo culls to seal clubbing.

“Australia’s slaughter of kangaroos has long been an outlier on the world stage when it comes to our treatment of wildlife,” it said.

However, the European Commission recently dismissed an appeal to ban the import of kangaroo meat, rejecting arguments made by three animal activist groups after finding no evidence that import requirements were not being met.

Kangaroo management expert and ANU Professor George Wilson said managing overabundant kangaroo populations purely as pests had previously proven expensive and failed to prevent pasture degradation and wide-scale kangaroo starvation.

He said while Nike’s decision could decrease the number of kangaroos commercially harvested, “this is not to say that the kangaroos won’t be culled”.

“Kangaroos will die but outside the commercial industry. Net result will be a reduction in capacity of regulators to monitor numbers or to check that animals have been taken by head shot. Is this really what agitators want?” he said.

“They are not in some giant national park, as the protagonists of the ban would appear to think, they are on pastoral properties alongside domestic livestock.”

Most harvesting occurs west of the Great Dividing Range in NSW and Queensland and then South Australia with smaller numbers in Victoria and Western Australia.

Adidas, the third multinational sporting goods company using kangaroo leather, has not made a statement.

The kicker for the leather industry is pelt prices have decreased by more than 60 per cent in recent years due to a drop in demand since the outbreak of Covid and the Ukrainian war.