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The trade of kangaroo skins and meat into the United States could be halted under a bill introduced in US Congress this week

Two US Congressmen have developed the Kangaroo Protection Act, which will look to stop the sale of kangaroo skin primarily used to make football boots in the United States.

Mr Pearson said there was no place for kangaroo products in markets like the US.

"This is the Australian icon — it's on our coat of arms and what this industry is doing is the largest slaughter of any land-dwelling mammal in the world," he said.

Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia executive officer Dennis King said the US Congress bill was misguided.

"No threatened species of kangaroos are commercially harvested in Australia and nor are kangaroos harvested for their hides," Mr King said.

"There are 50 different species of kangaroos in Australia and we are allowed by law to harvest six of them that are abundant."

Mr King said the commercial kangaroo industry made approximately $200 million in sales a year and employed around 3,000 people who are mostly Indigenous and live in remote and rural communities.

He said if the Kangaroo Protection Bill was passed in the US, it would have a large impact on the industry.

"It has the potential to destroy the industry here as we know it," he said.

"It would severely cut down the opportunity to harvest the animals and these skins would end up being left to rot on the ground."

If kangaroos are endangered, yes. If not, then I don't.

Personal opinion: this is fucking dumb

Ecologists are like "pls for fucks sake cull some kangaroos, they're in such large numbers that they're eating all the food, starving both other animals and themselves to death" (link: "Bigger appetite for kangaroo meat needed to rein in booming roo numbers, ecologist says"). Numbers have link each year. There is no longer much dingo or Indigenous predation on kangaroos, which acted as a natural balance prior to European colonisation. Environmental experts say we need to reduce their numbers, and get some kangaroo on our forks.

but "tHeY'Re iCoNic" or some shit

^^Nah they're not at all endangered. Quite the opposite lol