(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-06 10:03

SYDNEY -- More than 400 kangaroos living on Australian defence department land face being culled after a plan to relocate them was blocked, a report said Tuesday.

The state government of the Australian Capital Territory has refused to grant export licences to move the eastern grey kangaroos to neighbouring New South Wales, The Canberra Times said.

A kangaroo is seen in this undated file photo. More than 400 kangaroos living on Australian defence department land face being culled after a plan to relocate them was blocked, a report said Tuesday. [Agencies]

As a result, the department of defence had abandoned plans to move them from the former naval station in Belconnen in Canberra, leaving a cull as the only alternative, the paper said.

There was an international outcry in 2004 when about 900 kangaroos were destroyed at the site of a dam supplying water to Canberra, and a new cull would spark "significant national protest action", said Wildlife Protection Association president Pat O'Brien.

State Environment Commissioner Maxine Cooper said that while the kangaroos at the site were considered over-abundant, she had recommended against relocation because experts considered it inhumane.

"The advice I'm getting... is the amount of trauma that occurs to the animal in the first instance is something they feel is unacceptable," Cooper told ABC radio.

Relocation would reportedly involve darting and sedating the kangaroos.

Cooper declined to say whether she had recommended culling the animals in a report to the state government on managing the territory's lowland grasslands.

A political row over kangaroo management in the state erupted last year and then defence department shelved its plans to cull kangaroos while it considered the proposal to relocate the animals from Belconnen.