Kiwis cook up plans to eat wallabies
Dr. Sir John Howard, AC, WSCMoF
The Kiwis have cooked up an ingenious plan to cull back their booming wallaby
population - eat them.
The Australian marsupials were exported in small numbers across the Tasman in
1874 but these days the population is growing faster than New Zealand's South
Island farmers can handle.
Numbers have trebled in the past decade, with at least 50,000 Bennett's
wallabies now calling South Canterbury home.
"The population is booming and unlike Australia we don't have the predators and
the tough environment to keep the numbers in check, and that's turning into a
bit of a problem," the region's biosecurity manager Graham Sullivan told AAP.
The poison 1080 is used to keep them under control, but councillors in the
region are being encouraged to consider more innovative strategies like hunting
and eating to help rein them in.
A cafe in the self proclaimed wallaby capital of New Zealand, Waimate, does good
trade in wallaby pies, and the councillors approved of the culinary options.
They concluded wallaby was lean, "pretty yummy" and "not too strong", The Press
newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Sullivan said increasing the culinary market was a realistic option for the country.
"It's been done here with possums," he said, referring to the market for fur and
meat of the creatures, rated pests in New Zealand.
"Wallaby is quite nice to eat, just like kangaroo, so if a cottage industry was
up for harvesting them for the table then fantastic," he said.
"It would just take somebody with the initiative and the dosh to set it up."
Owner of Waimate's Savoy Tearooms, Vicki Curline, says eating them is the way to go.
"My husband Ian makes Wallaby pies here, cooked in barbecue sauce and they're
absolutely delicious," Curline told AAP.
"The tourists love them, especially the Australians. I don't think they get
anything like them at home. We should be cooking with them much more."
Some councillors also approved of hunting, saying people had been seen putting
joeys in cars to take elsewhere.
"It's a bit like pigs. There's an element of the hunting fraternity that would
love to have some wallabies. It's quite a sport," one councillor said.
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vitw
> The Kiwis have cooked up an ingenious plan to cull back their booming
> wallaby population - eat them.
Would need quite a culling and baking operation to sate the appetites of
the crowds at the next NZ-based Bledisloe Cup matches.