Tgk1946's Blog

From The Great Extermination (A.J. Marshall, 1966) pp26-9

The organised savagery with which Kangaroos are being hunted today is equalled in our history only by the appalling massacre of koalas in 1927.
Koalas had been killed for their fur from earliest times. The somnolent, slow-moving Koala is a sitting duck. Anybody with a rifle or shot gun can get into it several mauling shots because it simply has no chance of getting away. So, with the development of an export market, its skins were harvested with high profit, and almost unparalleled barbarity, in every place where it lived. By the turn of the century it was plentiful in few places outside Queensland. Nevertheless, in 1908 there were enough Koalas left in New South Wales for 57,933 skins to go through the Sydney markets in one year alone.
“Fortunately” said Lucas and le Souef, “the fur is not valued in the market.” One wonders how many more koalas would have been shot had their pelts been ‘valued’. In 1924, Wood-Jones lamented that the trade still continued, and gave the figure of 205,679 dead koalas for 1920 and 1921. Troughton says that in 1924 more than two million koala skins were exported, mainly under the name of ‘wombat’. In South Australia the Koala was completely exterminated soon after the First World War. In 1923, the South Australians made a conscience-stricken, and successful, attempt to establish Victorian animals on Kangaroo Island.
The disguise of koala pelts under the name of the less popular, though equally inoffensive wombat, is another indication that public conscience was, at long last, faintly astir. Wholesale skin-dealers, however, have never been at a loss in the invention of fictitious names. When in 1920 South Australians suspended protection of the Silver-grey Possum (during its breeding season, incidentally ), more than 100,000 were killed in the space of four months. In the few years after the First World War, between one and two million skins were marketed annually, many under the labels of ‘Skunk’ (when shorn and dyed), ‘Beaver’ and ‘Adelaide Chinchilla’.
Perhaps the most sordid episode in the history of Queensland came in August 1927. By now many people were aware of the precarious situation of the Koala in all States except Queensland, yet the local Government declared an open season and drew licence fees from no less than 10,000 registered trappers. By so doing the Queensland Government of the day made itself directly responsible for the massacre of nearly 600,000 koalas in the space of a few months.
In the Going, Going, Gone series of broadcasts I said that I would uncover the names of the local politicians who were responsible for this unsavoury business so that they, if not the Koala, would be preserved for posterity. Here they are:
The Queensland premier of the day was a Mr. W. McCormack. However, it seems that he was absent, and at various relevant times two other provincial politicians named Forgan Smith and A. J. Jones became Acting Premier.
The contemporary newspaper reports of the day make remarkable reading. It is of incidental interest that in those days even the local naturalists generally referred to the Koala as the Native Bear. The following information comes from the Brisbane Courier.
July 8. “The Queensland Government has declared that the month of August should be an open season for the hunting and trapping of native bears and opossums. … When he announced the decision yesterday, the Acting Premier and Minister for Agriculture and Stock (Mr. W. Forgan Smith) said that the question had received the fullest consideration, and a general survey was made under the Animals and Birds Act… . There had been no open seasons for native bears for eight years, since 1919. It had been strongly represented by trappers, and this was supported by official evidence, said the Minister, that native bears were to be found in large numbers in certain areas, due, probably, to the fact that the season for trapping this native animal had been closed for eight years, and also because it had only been opened for short intervals on three occasions in the past twenty years….”
July 13. Letter to the Editor from Mr. Geo. H. Barker, Member of Committee of Advice on Native Birds and Animals: “Reference to the Department of Agriculture confirms the news, though no reason can be learned of the decision . . . those of us who are interested in the preservation of this wonderfully interesting and harmless little animal are wondering what has transpired to give the Minister reason so suddenly to alter his very necessary and wise declaration of last year. As far as can be learned, no advice on this matter has been sought from the Department’s biological officers or rangers. Nor has the University or any scientific society competent to speak on the impending extinction of this little animal been in any way approached on the subject. In fact, so hurried and secret has the whole matter been kept that it looks as though strong opposition was clearly anticipated. . . . As the only way bears can contribute to the revenue is by dying and handing over their skins, dead they have to be. It is quite on the cards that the Department will even be blind as they were last year and not notice trappers violating the bird and animal sanctuaries as they did in their desperate efforts to leave no possum alive….”
An editorial of the same day said “It is quite futile for the Government to pretend to be in favour of preservation of the remnant of the bears and possums if it permits an open season for wholesale slaughter. Nobody imagines that. the trappers and shooters are going to wait till the night of August 1 to begin their work . . . doubtless the practice is in full swing now, because the trappers and shooters can hold their skins till August… .”
In the same issue it was reported that Mr. Forgan Smith refused to discuss the matter when approached by the Courier.
July 16: “On this occasion, the Minister endeavoured to justify the Government’s action. Mr. Forgan Smith claimed that the Animals and Birds Act of Queensland provided a degree of protection for native fauna equal to that accorded to the fauna of any other country in the world [sic!]. The fur industry was a valuable one in Queensland, he said, and it was worthy of note that the royalty collected therefrom did not go into general revenue, but was earmarked for the purpose of providing funds for the further protection of our fauna and the supervision of sanctuaries.”
July 18: A protest by His Grace Archbishop Sharp was prominently featured. He called for State-wide protests. . . . “I think that if the Acting Premier realises how very deep an offence the permission to destroy native bears has given a vast number of quiet, peaceable, decent-minded people, the permission would be withdrawn. I write in all seriousness when I say that our feelings ought not to be so wounded.”
In the Courier of July 19 there was a letter from Vance Palmer, the author, among others. “The shooting of our harmless and lovable native bear is nothing less than barbarous. His case is extremely different from that of other furred animals. No one has ever accused him of spoiling the farmers’ wheat, eating the squatters’ grass, or even of spreading the prickly pear. There is not a social vice that can be put down to his account. In addition, he is comparatively defenceless. He affords no sport to the gun-man… he has been almost blotted out already from some areas, in days when our fauna and flora were held in such little regard that the settlers’ first instinct was to shoot every strange animal and to sink his axe into every unfamiliar tree. . . . ”
So far only two of many hundreds of letters agreed with the Government action.
July 20, Editorial: “Unless the order to slaughter the native bears is withdrawn, the Government will bring itself into contempt in every part of the Commonwealth. . . . Surely the Government will not antagonise public opinion any longer by dis- regarding the requests that are pouring in from all parts of the State.”
July 21: The Courier published three full columns devoted to letters of protests and, in addition, a long letter defending the open season by Mr. Thos. A. Foley, M.L.A. After saying that Native Bears suffered from natural diseases, Mr. Foley declared that “it would be to the advantage of the animals as a whole to occasionally have a thinning out as is done by pastoralists and other breeders of domesticated animals when disease attacks them. . . . With regard to another point raised, i.e. the cruelty of shooting such a quaint little animal . . . there is no finer pet for children than a small lamb. It can be safely granted that many of your correspondents, including Archbishop Sharp . . . have on more than one occasion passed their plate for a second helping of lamb and mint sauce, notwithstanding the pitiful look of the lamb about to be slaughtered. . .. My own views are that, with proper supervision, in close seasons, the production of furs in Queensland can be made one of the leading industries of the State. At present it is more important than the mining industry [sic].”
The protests from hundreds of good-hearted Queenslanders continued, and on July 25 Mr. Forgan Smith, who was visiting Sydney, said that the Government would be prepared to review the decision. It would have been better if Brisbane naturalists had “approached the Government with facts and figures instead of making a clamour in the newspapers”. Many of the protests, he said, were “actuated by political malevolence”.
In the same issue the Courier printed 3% columns of protests, mostly from country districts, including many bushmen who demolished Mr. Foley’s arguments and ‘facts’.
“A crawler is what the true-blue bushmen call the man in their midst who can kill the native bear for pleasure or profit” said one sturdy man of the outback. “His [Mr. Foley’s] contention that it is a good thing to shoot the bears to prevent them dying from disease is ridiculous. He might just as well suggest that we should all commit suicide so as to preclude the possibility of dying from cancer. . .. Mr. Foley also claims to be a bushman. He may think he is, but many people who are able to find their way along a well-defined bush track from one township to another labour under the same delusion.”
There is plenty of contemporary evidence that trappers had been storing skins for months before August 1, the day set by