Trouble for kangaroos

From the Wall Street Journal:

Should You Eat a National Emblem?
May 2, 2008

Last month's announcement that 400 kangaroos would be culled in Australia's capital, Canberra, attracted considerable international attention. The imagery was too good to ignore. Australia's national emblem, the kangaroo, was to be slaughtered en masse in the home of our parliament, high court and the national art gallery. Surely this was akin to clubbing giant pandas in Beijing or rounding up Bengal tigers in New Delhi.

Australians' connection to our national emblem, however, has always been somewhat more ambivalent than the international perception. Yes, when our yachtsmen won the America's Cup in 1983 they did so under the banner of a boxing kangaroo. And a whole generation of children grew up watching a television show entitled "Skippy" starring an almost omniscient kangaroo that, when it was not communicating with humans, was pulling people out of burning buildings.-- Read on