By Callum Ludwig
Woori Yallock resident and former President of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council Peter Preuss is passionate about protecting kangaroos in the Yarra Ranges and is inviting members of the community to join him in advocating for the much-loved marsupials.
Mr Preuss is holding regular ‘Walk and Talk’ events at the Yarra Valley Living Centre (55 Rayner Court, Yarra Junction) with the intention of showing and discussing the issues kangaroos face with both local councillors and residents.
Mr Preuss originally tried to hold a Walk and Talk with councillors in November 2024 before holding a public one the following month and is planning a third for Australia Day this month.
Mr Preuss said the response so far has been a mixed bag.
“At any time (at the Yarra Valley Living Centre), you can see a couple of hundred kangaroos and it’s a brilliant spot to bust the myths, for a start, how there aren’t two million of them, because 25 years ago there was almost the same number of kangaroos there,” he said.
“It just shows that they will not keep breeding exponentially, they have a limit and they seem to be able to work themselves out in a way, even though you go there and there’s joeys everywhere, they don’t all succeed and the numbers just don’t skyrocket,”
“The other reason why it’s a good spot to go to is that they are knee-deep in grass, there are so many of them and they have to mow it for fire reasons so they won’t eat themselves out of house and home, there’s a bunch of other myths the place itself just debunks.”
Mr Preuss first called on Yarra Ranges Council at a council meeting in July 2023 to request the Victorian Government exclude the municipality from the commercial harvesting of kangaroos and to develop a kangaroo management plan that will reflect that position, taking inspiration from the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council and Mount Alexander Shire Councils at the time.
As of 2025, harvesting is banned in 31 of Victoria’s 79 local government areas (LGAs) with 10 more having been added to the exclusion zone this year. Four of the neighbouring LGAs to the Yarra Ranges; Knox, Maroondah, Cardinia and Nillumbik are within the exclusion zone. Mornington and Nillumbik both lobbied to be excluded, alongside Mount Alexander, although Mount Alexander remains included in the Kangaroo Harvesting Program.
The KHP quota for 2025 has also been set at 106,750 kangaroos throughout Victoria (combined eastern and western grey kangaroos), including 11,900 eastern grey kangaroos in the Gippsland harvest zone which includes the Yarra Ranges. In 2024, the kangaroo harvesting quota began at 155,650 before being revised to 142,350, including a final total of 43,900 kangaroos in the Central Harvest Zone the Yarra Ranges was previously in.
Mr Preuss said they won’t meet the quota because we just don’t have the kangaroos to meet it.
“Normally you would have a quota on something like fishing, you’d say you’re allowed to catch five of these fish and the chances are you could catch six of them or seven or more, but you have to stop at five but the kangaroo shooter doesn’t have to worry about that because he’s never gonna meet the quota, the numbers are just simply not there,” he said.
“It’s why the Mallee has a quota of zero, that’s where it all started because there were so many kangaroos there and then they shot them to the point of commercial extinction, though I’m not saying that the kangaroos are extinct in the Mallee, they’re still in national parks.”
When Mr Preuss was working with the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Australian Wildlife Protection Council in the 1980s, he was part of a group which helped end the commercial killing of kangaroos until it was reintroduced in 2019.
“Mr Preuss said we wouldn’t be losing anything by going back to what we had before.
“If the farmer thinks he’s got a problem, he can apply for and get a permit to shoot them without it being commercial, once it’s become commercial people think they have a problem when they actually don’t,” he said.
“Commercial shooters approach landowners saying ‘I can fix your problem’ and they more often than not are going ‘What problem? And say’ ‘Oh these kangaroos, they’ll be eating your grapes’ but I’m a grapevine grower myself, I make wine and they don’t eat grapes,”
“The amount that maybe the odd kangaroo will have a taste of is just minuscule, yet you’ve got vineyards that are allowing the commercial shooters to come in and take them out.”
Mr Preuss can be contacted at peter.preuss@bigpond.com for anyone interested in joining a ‘Walk and Talk’ event and he is also happy to provide a free ebook copy of his book ‘The Red Sands of Hattah’ which details the campaign to stop the mass killing of kangaroos in Hattah-Kulkyne National Park in the 1980s.
