By GREG ANSLEY
As its troops battle the Taleban in Afghanistan and guard the border of the new republic of East Timor, the Australian Army is facing the gun at home.
Picking its way through a public relations minefield, the Army has called in shooters to kill thousands of kangaroos facing
starvation on its big training ground at Puckapunyal, north of Melbourne.
But the slaughter of a national icon is always fraught, as governments find every time they announce a new kangaroo cull or encourage the controversial but rapidly growing roo-meat industry.
On Sunday animal rights protesters broke through electrified boundary fences and dumped bales of lucerne in a bid to stop the programme to shoot at least 15,000 kangaroos on the base.
As many as 45,000 may eventually be killed.
But despite continued efforts to change the Army's mind, the shooters moved in yesterday.
Defence Department spokesman Brian Humphreys said a licensed contractor experienced in animal culling operations had started work, supervised by local RSPCA inspectors.
Furious protesters threatened to "confront the guns" and claimed the cull was a pretext to establish a commercial kangaroo meat industry in Victoria.
"There is a political agenda here to use the pretext of starving animals to make money," animal activist spokeswoman Rheya Linden told The Age.
But Humphreys said there was no real option.
RSPCA inspectors had reported finding large numbers of kangaroo carcases littered around the 44,000ha training ground, many trapped in the fences erected by the Army after complaints by nearby farmers of massive feeding forays on crops and pastures.
The Army has admitted blame for allowing the roo population to explode after using them to replace sheep to control grass, and failing to keep numbers under control.
In the past few years the number of kangaroos on the base has almost doubled to more than 80,000, packing its area with twice the population it could support, and causing mass starvation.
