Woori Yallock resident and vigneron Peter Preuss is continuing to take on kangaroo control concerns, recently conducting a survey to try and find out whether and why local wineries and agribusiness engage commercial shooters.
Mr Preuss contacted 84 other Yarra Valley vineyards asking them to complete a short survey, receiving ten responses, and later adapted the survey to send to all forms of agribusiness in the region.
Mr Preuss said it took a year and a half to get Yarra Ranges Council to unanimously agree to request an exemption to the Kangaroo Harvesting Program (KHP) and the main thing that got it over the line was community support.
“I was expecting some pushback from those people that are in favour of it and in fact, the Agribusiness Yarra Valley did state that farmers were having difficulty with kangaroos, but they didn’t say which farmers, they didn’t say how or what the difficulties were,” he said.
“I knew that there were some vignerons that have opened up their properties to commercial shooters and it’s one thing that I do know something about because I’m a vigneron myself…I enjoy having the kangaroos in over winter, this year in particular with it being so dry, I didn’t have to mow at all because they did me a favour.
“I didn’t get a very massive uptake… but what I did get is small ones like a two-acre family affair right through to the big multinationals and I only got two that tried to defend their position for having called in commercial shooters.”
Only two vineyard respondents claimed kangaroos cause substantial damage to infrastructure, eat grapes, and impact revegetation works and both had recently allowed commercial shooters onto their properties and would do so again.
Mr Preuss said he believes you might get the odd kangaroo that has a little taste of grapes or foliage but they don’t generally do that because they’re graziers who eat grass.
“If you’re revegetating with native grasses, perhaps they might have a nibble of that but they’re not going to eat your shrubs or your bushes or your trees,” he said.
“Deer do that, deer are moving into places in unprecedented numbers and causing quite a bit of damage and I think the kangaroos get the blame for it.”
Of the 29 agribusinesses that responded to the surveys, all but five at least somewhat supported Council’s call to stop commercial killing of kangaroos and of these:
Two do not support the Council’s position, use commercial shooters and would do so again, having used non-commercial Authority to Control Wildlife (ATCW) permits in the past but are prefer to utilise commercial shooters instead.
A third grazier had never felt the need to kill kangaroos before but recently allowed commercial shooters to operate on their property and now ‘somewhat’ support Council’s call to stop commercial killing.
One late respondent who described themselves as a 48-acre subsistence agriculturalist also only somewhat supported the call to stop commercial killing and another who was a 17-acre hobby farmer with paddocks, wetland and garden did not agree with the Council’s position.
Mr Preuss said he worries by the time the KHP is reviewed for 2028 the situatio could be worse and he hopes the State Government will listen to the people.
“Some were blaming kangaroos for 50 per cent of their costs hat’s quite unbelievable but if that were the case, you’ve got to question the commercial shooting itself working for them, and when they list the problems, it includes things like fence damage,” he said.
“When you shoot kangaroos, they run and damage fences but if you leave them alone, they will find a way through holes in the fence that already exist, or they’ll take their time jumping them.”
“If for some reason they’ve (the Victorian Government) just gone ‘No we’ve already planned to review things in 2028’, then they won’t have any excuse but my concern is we’ll have very few kangaroos left by then.”
