Wallaby numbers on King Island have increased to at least 400,000 largely due to the supply of improved pastures and the absence of high order predators.
As a consequence the wallabies are competing with domestic grazing animals for pastures and destroying native flora so farmers and natural resource managers have been trying to control them by shooting and fencing. Shooting is a cost to producers and results in the carcase having no value.
A project was designed to explore the potential to sustainably harvest King Island wallaby for sale in high value Chinese restaurants so as a value chain could be created whereby a significant financial return could flow to King Island farmers and processors.
Report Summary_Asian export wallaby meat
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