Native animals may be used to produce human and pet food, and for such products as processed skins and leather, feathers, oils, cosmetics and health-care aids, medicines and fertilisers.
A number of native animals are currently used in Victoria to create a limited variety of animal products. In this chapter the Committee reviews the current operation and potential of these animal-product industries. The Committee also considers the potential of those sectors operating elsewhere in Australia that may offer opportunities for Victorian industry.
Virtually all such animal product industries are consumptive of the species population, that is, they are reliant on the killing of individual animals.
The Resource
There are 111 species of mammal known to occur in Victoria (of which 91 are native non-marine species), 447 bird species, 133 reptile species, 33 amphibians, and 46 species of freshwater fish. Victoria also has an unknown, but huge, number of invertebrates - sponges, coelenterates (such as jellyfish and anemones), molluscs, crustaceans, spiders, insects and echinoderms (such as star fish and sea urchins).1
Victoria's mammalian fauna is particularly rich, reflecting a diverse range of environments within a relatively small area. However, only one species, Leadbeater's possum (Gymnobelideus leadbeateri), is found exclusively in Victoria - it is the State's only endemic species.
The impact of European settlement has been particularly severe in the semi-arid zone of Victoria where, by the 1920s, about one-third of the species had been wiped out.2 The impact on native species was less pronounced elsewhere in Victoria. Indeed, Victorian zoologists report that:
a few species have probably increased their range, but not necessarily their population numbers, as a result of the changes wrought by Europeans. 3
Such species include:
[the] common brushtail possum, eastern grey kangaroo, eastern horseshoe bat and the water rat. [In addition] the black wallaby is undergoing a dramatic expansion into western Victoria ... .4
Early Utilisation of Native Fauna in Victoria
A number of common and readily obtained animal species were used by pre-contact Aboriginal communities and by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal post-contact communities for subsistence use. It was, however, European immigrants who first developed commercial industries based on animal products.
In the 19th century a number of species of whale and seal were hunted in large numbers for oil, as well as, respectively, bone and skins. However, numbers had crashed by the mid-1840s and the industries collapsed. By the end of the 19th century huge numbers of koalas were being killed for their pelts; koala fur became an important export industry up until the 1920s, when numbers plummeted.5 The common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) was also hunted for its skin (and still is in Tasmania). During the 1959 season, some 107,500 common brushtail possums were recorded as being harvested in Victoria. A smaller number of ringtail possums were also taken.6
Platypus, brush-tailed rock wallabies and grey kangaroos are among the many other species that have been hunted in Victoria for production of food and fur, again principally in the 19th century and early 20th century.
These early industries were reliant on the wild-harvest of animals. Almost with out exception, they involved animals being killed at rates that were unsustainable. Consequently the industries were mostly short lived. In addition, as the wild populations diminished, public concern led to the enactment of legislation that gave protection to the affected species and restricted access to animals. Such legislation has continued, in various forms, up until the present.
