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U.S. Senators, for the First Time Ever, Tell Australia They’ll Work to Close U.S. Market to Kangaroo Skins
Dear friend,
Thanks to our “Kangaroos Are Not Shoes” campaign – launched in 2020 – the world now knows details of the largest slaughter of mammals in the world for commercial trade in their parts.
Nighttime shooters roll into kangaroo habitats with their spotlights and rifles and take aim at entire families of kangaroos – gunning them down indiscriminately, without distinguishing between males and females.
The females often have a joey in the pouch or at the foot. And without their “mums,” the newborns are doomed.
It’s estimated these commercial shooters slay more than one million adult kangaroos in their native habitats in Australia, leaving about 300,000 joeys to face the world orphaned, afraid, and not equipped to survive.
That’s about the same number of harped and hooded seals clubbed and shot in the infamous springtime slaughter of the seal nursery in Atlantic Canada at its zenith decades ago.
Corporate Action Is Driving Political Action
Earlier this year, the U.K.-based soccer shoe maker Sokito joined the earlier pledges from sportswear giants Nike, Puma [[link removed]] , and New Balance [[link removed]] in divorcing the company from this commercial slaughter of kangaroo families and clans. Diadora, an Italy-based athletic shoe giant, dropped kangaroo-based shoes in 2021.
These decisions came as a direct response to the awareness and campaign work built up by the Center for a Humane Economy through its Kangaroos Are Not Shoes (KANS) campaign.
The Center and its allies across the globe have demanded that athletic shoe companies use alternative fabrics in shoes to halt the mass wounding and killing of kangaroos. Those alternative fabrics dominate their soccer shoe models already, so there’s no argument on functionality of kangaroo skin to be found at all.
And this week, we picked up two very prominent supporters – U.S. Senators Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and Cory Booker, D-N.J. For the first time, U.S. senators have introduced legislation to ban the trade in kangaroo parts in the United States – one of the world’s largest markets for Australian kangaroo skins and other kangaroo products.
The freshly minted Kangaroo Protection Act of 2024, S. 5118, aligns with a U.S. House bill, H.R. 4995, led by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., to achieve the same purpose. These lawmakers in both chambers of Congress are seeking to extend to the nation what a law in California does in our nation’s biggest state and largest soccer market.
“The mass killing of millions of kangaroos to make commercial products is needless and inhumane—and we must do better,” said Sen. Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran and Purple Heart recipient who has seen suffering and violence firsthand. “I’m proud to introduce this bill with Senator Booker that would help prevent the deadly exploitation of kangaroos and promote the use of more humane alternatives to k-leather.”
“We must take action to conserve the kangaroo species and end their inhumane exploitation,” said Sen. Booker. “This legislation will ensure that no one in the United States can distribute kangaroo products for commercial benefits.”
Adidas Remains the Outlier Among Major Brands
Adidas reneged on a public pledge in 2012 to end its role in the kangaroo skin trade. It’s been 12 years, and we are still waiting for action.
There’s no question that Adidas has been the worst athletic wear company on the planet when it comes to kangaroos. It worked for years, without success, to reverse California’s ban on selling kangaroo parts, not only asking legislators to repeal the law, but also taking a case to the California Supreme Court to overturn it.
Adidas’s CEO is now sending signals that the company may finally do the right thing, but we’ve heard hollow promises many times before. We need action, not corporate doublespeak.
Adidas tells the public that it has confidence in Australia’s “management” of the commercial kill and that it’s humane. But the company knows the cruelty behind its corporate decisions because even the Australian government acknowledges that the joeys are collateral damage of the export trade in kangaroo skins.
Australia mandates that any orphaned joeys found must be killed by blunt force trauma, such as hitting them in the head with a rock or slamming their skulls against a truck fender. The mere acknowledgement of the need for these “humane killing” guidelines with rocks and fenders tells us that Australia knows about the mass orphaning problem in the field.
Kangaroos are native to Australia, uniquely adapted to the landscapes of Australia. They’ve survived for 15 million years, whereas humans have occupied the Australian continent for only about 50,000 years. In all that time, kangaroos in the wild never required the kind of population “management” meted out by government and industry today.
Can anyone at Adidas or within the Australian government logically suggest that the outcome could be worse for the animals if these shooting sprees were halted?
From beginning to end, it’s ghastly and cruel. And nobody who is part of this trade can tell us it doesn’t happen. It happens every day on the lands that kangaroos rightfully treat as their homeland.
Please write your U.S. Representative and your two U.S. Senators today and urge them to cosponsor the Kangaroo Protection Act. [[link removed]]
CONTACT YOUR LEGISLATORS [[link removed]]
With you at our side, we can convince the biggest companies in the world and prevail and protect animals. Would you consider making a contribution to allow us to work to spare kangaroos from these merciless assaults? [[link removed]]
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For the kangaroos,
Wayne Pacelle [[link removed]] Wayne Pacelle
President
Center for a Humane Economy
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