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Dear friend,
When we started our Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign in 2020 — with the audacious idea of facing down the government of Australia and its midwife’s role in delivering the world’s largest slaughter of land mammals — we faced a formidable challenge.
All the world’s major athletic shoe brands sourced kangaroo skins for their soccer cleats, and there were dozens of other uses of kangaroo parts.
But since that time, we’ve convinced Nike, Puma, New Balance, and Diadora to end their sourcing of kangaroo skins for soccer shoes.
Today, there is a worldwide movement coalescing to confront the world’s biggest outlier on the kangaroo-parts trade: the Germany-based global brand of Adidas.
Last weekend, I was joyful in seeing pictures and social media posts of a global day of action against Adidas, with out-of-store and in-store protests staged from New York City to Berlin to Sydney and Melbourne.
It’s No Time to Let Up on Our Campaign
Thanks to our Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign, the world now knows details of the largest slaughter of mammals in the world.
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 young 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.
The toll on just the joeys is about as large as the body count 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 2023 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 mobs. And one Australia-based group reported just days ago that the France-based Decathlon — a global sportswear company that sells a wide range of brands — is going to phase out its role in the kangaroo parts trade by 2027.
In short, the Center’s campaign has now gone viral, with groups all over the world taking action to help the kangaroos.
That’s exactly what we’d hoped to see. It’s a sign of progress when groups with a common purpose join together to exert more collective punching power.
The government of the Netherlands is looking at legislation to address the trade. And there’s more action in Congress than ever. Earlier this year, the Kangaroo Protection Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate for the first time, following up on a similar bill in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“The mass killing of millions of kangaroos to make commercial products is needless and inhumane — and we must do better,” said Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), an Iraq War veteran and Purple Heart recipient who has seen suffering and violence firsthand. “I’m proud to introduce the Kangaroo Protection Act 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 Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.). “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’re 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.
Kangaroos are native to Australia and uniquely adapted to the landscapes of that continent. 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, commercial slaughter of kangaroos is 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 native to kangaroos for millions of years.
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 help us 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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