I recently came across an article while perusing the Twitterverse about how 6000 kangaroos are being killed by the Australian army in Canberra. At first glance, the title makes one fly into an instantaneous state of shock and anger. Then I read the article and I came away from it with a sense of unease and confusion. Why the change of emotions? Well, the article says that the kangaroos are being killed because of overpopulation and because they are causing harm to the ecosystem. Now I’m not going to try and argue if this is true or not or if this is just another excuse for humans to kill (6000 out of 9000 does seem a bit steep). Taking what the article states as fact, I think, brings up an important philosophical debate. The claims are that the kangaroo population is too large to be sustainable and that they are having a negative impact on the area – “The killings are intended to protect endangered plants and insects that share the grassy habitat with the kangaroos.” It says that they are also “threatening endangered reptiles, the grassland earless dragon and the striped legless lizard”. Now here comes the obvious to ask but not to answer question: should they? And that is what I asked when I retweeted the link. I got a response from @kdavenprt, which is where I got the original story from. The conversation went like this:

kdavenprt: Know there are arguments for and against. Absolutely hate the thought of this, it breaks my heart.

RescueAnimals: I hate the thought, too. But if it is true, then it does seem to be a choice btw them and many other species. How do you decide?

kdavenprt: I know, it’s so sad. I have no idea how to make a choice like that. I know they have to do what’s best for all species.

And therein lies the philosophical debate. How does one choose one species over another? True, in a complete, untouched ecosytem, this wouldn’t be a problem. Before all the top predators were eradicated the kangaroo numbers would have been kept down naturally. There would have been a balance and people would not have to step in to reduce the numbers of one species to help save others. The problem is, however, that humans DID interfere. We made it so that certain species were able to breed beyond their means and thus are having a heavier impact on resources than they would naturally. Because it is our fault this happened in the first place, is it our job to try and correct it? Assuming all the facts are straightforward and the kangaroo population will grow so large that they’ll start to starve to death but not before destroying the environment around them, what is the ethical thing to do? Bear in mind that while many of us outside of Australia think killing a kangaroo is downright despicable, in the Australian ecosystem, they have about the same role as deer do elsewhere. Now I personally would not want either of those animals to be killed but in answering this question, try to keep that bias to a minimum. This isn’t about kangaroos. It’s about the difficulty in trying to decide what the right thing to do in this case is. Should we fix our mess or should we try to just let nature take its course from here on out? How do you answer such a question? Can we ever truly know what the right choice is? Please leave comments and discuss it with us!