It's called pest control.

[cardigan]

THERE are countless unimaginable cruelties being unleashed around the world at the moment, and just as many reasons to get angry.

So let's do the numbers.

In China, 50,000 are dead and hundreds of bodies of schoolchildren remain under rubble after last week's earthquake, many the victims of corrupt officials and shonky builders.

In Burma, the final death toll may pass 200,000 and more are homeless and starving because their paranoid and venal militia government refuses to open its borders to relief efforts.

But folks, reserve all your anger for a local travesty.

Australia, the home of the cruel and inhumane, has embarked on a massacre already triggering international headlines and condemnation that will, according to some, forever tarnish our reputation and hurt our tourism industry.

That's right. Four hundred kangaroos are to be culled just north of Canberra. The horror, the horror.

Little wonder a coalition of more than 30 animal rights groups has been gathering in the nation's capital doing its best to whip up a tide of shame and disgust at the notion that we are slaughtering 400 of our most iconic animals.

"Nobody would seriously think that Australia has any right to criticise Japan for its whaling while we are killing 3½ million kangaroos every year for dog food," says Pat O'Brien, the fearless leader of the National Kangaroo Protection Coalition.

Putting aside the fact that Australia has a growing kangaroo meat export business with Japan (a Japanese website excitedly promotes the benefits of kangaroo sushi with chilli, while thousands of tons are shipped for pet food), O'Brien's passion is sadly not matched by his numeracy, or his logic.

There are only about 70,000 humpback whales remaining on this planet. So far, there have been no reported sightings of them braving the drought and entering the Australian interior to graze on precious land reserved for livestock.

There are more than 50 million kangaroos in Australia.

Female humpbacks usually breed every two or three years. Gestation takes more than 11 months.

Kangaroos can breed all year round, and often do. Gestation takes just over a month. They can increase their populations by up to 400 per cent in just five years when food and water is plentiful.

Comparing Japan's slaughter of an endangered species with this week's cull of eastern grey kangaroos by the Defence Department at two of its properties on the outskirts of Canberra just doesn't make sense. But in the animal rights world, sometimes the numbers just don't add up.

O'Brien and others have warned that the death of 400 kangaroos will leave a bloody stain on the national character and impact on the number of tourists who will want to visit this country in future.

"We are expecting hundreds of people and if they start killing them we'll be going inside the fence. We will have a 24-hour guard on them," he has said.

Funny, but there are no reports of animal rights activists gathering on the Snowy Mountains highway. A few years ago scientists set up a study along a 20km stretch of that road to examine roadkill levels. In 10 months, 400 eastern greys were found splattered on the bitumen.

You can't say the animal rights groups are naive when it comes to whipping up publicity. Sir Paul McCartney has been embroiled in the cause, warning against the potential of a massacre.

Last weekend a former Neighbours star, Fiona Corke, travelled to Canberra to raise national alarm.

And guess what? That good old script about the whales was served up yet again. "It is hypocritical that Peter Garrett is running an anti-whaling campaign and yet is allowing hundreds of kangaroos to be killed to make room for a housing development," Corke said.

Well, it's not quite like that. There are actually threatened species hovering on the edge of extinction just outside Canberra, including unconfirmed sightings of one or two politicians who can keep election promises.

In lean times, kangaroos threaten their survival, along with surrounding grasslands. To have moved the 400 kangaroos from defence land would have cost an estimated $3.5 million and, according to one report, relocation can often be traumatic and inhumane.

There are more than three million kangaroos harvested in Australia each year. They contribute to a growing export business that creates jobs and helps to keep kangaroo numbers at a manageable level.

Of course, kangaroos are cute.

But so are rabbits. And we kill them, too, when their numbers explode and they start degrading the environment.

There are many things in this world that deserve every ounce of outrage and anger that we can muster. But worrying about 400 kangaroos being sedated before getting the bullet is not one of them.

It's called pest control.