RESIDENTS are incensed by yet another incident of animal cruelty in Broken Hill, this time inflicted on a kangaroo so badly injured it had to be euthanised.
Stephanie Grieve is a volunteer for WIRES, rescuing sick, injured and orphaned native wildlife.
Last Saturday evening, a member of the public called with a tip off that led her and her husband to the gruesome scene.
“When we arrived, we found the kangaroo was in quite a lot of distress,” Ms Grieve said.
“We could see that there were some pretty bad injuries, particularly some swelling around his jaw,”
The caller claimed to have witnessed children beating the kangaroo with sticks and large rocks, causing the animal to enter a shocked state called myopathy, in which an animal’s muscles and organs shut down.
“Based on that, we decided to call in the local police to assist in euthanasia,” said Ms Grieve, “mostly because of his size – he was over six feet tall and approximately 70kgs, so he was a very big boy.”
Ms Grieve said there was a high probability that the beating, not some earlier accident, had caused the injuries that ultimately lead to the animal’s death.
“Particularly with the jaw swelling, we do think that probably came from what happened,” she said. “But, aside from that, our main worry was just how stressed he was, so the myopathy was the biggest thing, and we didn’t want to just leave him to suffer.”
Where did this happen exactly? I’ll just say a local oval, I won’t actually say where it was, but it was just one of the local sporting ovals.
It is believed police spoke to the parents but no charges have been laid, on account of the ages of the children.
“What we really would like to ask is that parents have that talk with their children, about respecting the wildlife, not just kangaroos, but anything like lizards and birds,” Ms Grieve said.
“But the incident does show more people are being quite vigilant – they’re not holding back, for the animals.
The ugly incident comes not one month after 20-year-old Jet Jai Johnson was sentenced to 14 months’ imprisonment for acts of animal cruelty that shocked the city
