Emu War
As Emu War ( German Emukrieg ), also Great Emu War ( German Großer Emukrieg ) and Emu Pest ( German Emuplage ), in the British / Australian-speaking area, a deployment of the Australian army against a herd of large emus , which took place in the last quarter of 1932 took place in the region of what is now the Western Australian Wheat Belt .
Emus
Way of life
The great emus are flightless birds, 150 to 190 centimeters in size, that usually live as solitary animals. They weigh 30 to 45 kilograms. The habitat of the diurnal great emus is formed by open eucalyptus forests and plantations, heathland and, more rarely, dry plains or deserts throughout Australia. It is estimated that around 100,000 to 200,000 of these birds live in western Australia today; that's a little more than when they were hunted.
The emus, except for the breeding males, are not tied to a specific location. They roam in search of food, covering long distances. Emus eat food with a comparatively high nutritional value. Plants originally native to Australia as well as plants introduced by Europeans are used. One of the adaptations to their habitat is the ability of the emus to build up large fat reserves. They eat all day. Since they have to take in water every day, they often follow thunderstorm fronts when water is scarce. If the food supply becomes scarce, the search becomes more and more extensive, and then the normally solitary emus meet other conspecifics more and more frequently. Today herd formation hardly occurs any more, as the water scarcity has decreased due to artificially created water reservoirs.
Emu migration in Western Australia
The annual migration of the emus in Western Australia takes place in a south-westerly direction in the Australian summer and in a north-easterly direction in the winter. Statistically speaking, an emu herd occurs every seven years. The growing up of a large emu population and little rainfall are the prerequisites for herd formation. The largest herd in the past was created in 1976 with around 100,000 emus. In herding, large numbers of emus are shot by farmers or fatally injured while overcoming fences, especially today at the State Barrier Fence , a 1,170 kilometer long fence.
conflict
procedure
Due to prolonged drought and extreme heat, emus began herding in Western Australia in 1932. The herd invaded the settlers' agricultural areas as they migrated and caused damage to the wheat fields in the Campion and Walgoolan area . The size of the herd was estimated at around 20,000 animals. In their search for food and water, they moved on the wheat fields and trampled them down. Because since the Great Depression of 1929, wheat prices had plummeted, their behavior threatened the livelihood of settlers. The settlers were former soldiers who settled in a government-sponsored settlement program after the First World War . They complained to the government of Western Australia and requested a military operation.
In response, three soldiers from the 7th Heavy Battery of the Royal Australian Artillery , including Major CWP Meredith, came to the fields near Campion on November 3, 1932 . The Australian Ministry of Defense ordered the major in charge of the mission to obtain 100 emu hides. The hats of the lightly armed cavalry were to be equipped with the emu feathers . On November 3, 1932, Australian daily newspapers reported the first machine gunshots on the emus and used the term Emu War or 'war' on emus for the first time . In the first few days, the military scored few hits, but missed a lot of ammunition, and shortly afterwards the mission was terminated. For example, when they were deployed again, the soldiers, armed with light machine guns of the Lewis Gun type, shot 40 emus on November 13 and 14. On November 15, they did not kill an emu, despite high ammunition consumption. This was not surprising, as the birds can escape speeds of up to 50 km / h. Many emus that were hit several times fled. This is probably related to the fact that some of the bullets only penetrated the fat layers of the animals and did not kill them immediately. The soldiers changed their tactics, but the emus also changed their behavior, because now individual emus observed the area and shouted warnings in case of danger. On December 2, Meredith reported that around 100 emus had been shot per week. In his report of December 10th, he names 986 emus hunted and he assumed that another 2,500 birds that had been hit died later. In other sources, the number of emus hunted is quantified differently, ranging from a few to hundreds of animals.
The Australian Defense Minister George Pearce , who had ordered the military measure to obtain emu feathers, was mocked in the Australian Parliament on November 18, 1932: he was
“Minister for the Emu War. Let him get back to his emus. "
“Emu War Minister. Send him back to his emus. "
Subsequent measures to date
In 1934, 1943 and 1948, the settlers again requested military assistance from the government to evict emus. Since the measures against the emus, such as the use of machine guns and poison, offering rewards for picking up emu eggs and capturing them, were ineffective, the government of Western Australia approved a cabinet decision of AU £ 52,000 in 1953 for the construction of a 135 mile long Fence. It should be led south in front of the salt lake Lake Moore in an east-west direction between the Rabbit-Proof Fence No. 1 and No. 2. The fence started in 1957 and completed in 1959 was named Lake Moore Emu Fence .
The historic Rabbit-Proof Fence , which was supposed to keep rabbits and dingoes out , was created in the early 20th century. It has recently been strengthened and expanded to become the so-called “State Barrier Fence” with a length of 1,170 kilometers in the south-west of Western Australia. The government of Western Australia sponsored the recent fence extension with AU £ 6.5 million. The expansion of the fence is the result of political pressure from farmers, who in turn fear that their crop yields could be threatened by emus and that their cattle could be attacked by wild animals. Today, environmental organizations argue against the fence that it does not take into account ecological factors that were not yet known when the earlier Rabbit-Proof Fence was built. Not only do emus die en masse when crossing the State Barrier Fence or are shot by farmers, but also the distances that the emus cover would have an ecological impact on biodiversity in times of climate change. The emus would spread the seeds of threatened plants and thus ensure their preservation. The most serious shortcoming of the new fence is also the separation of an area of 300,000 hectares from the ecologically important 16 million hectares of Great Western Woodlands .
Web links
- Image of a herd of emu in front of the fence. Retrieved June 28, 2014 .
- Image of dead emus in front of the fence. Australian Geographic, accessed June 28, 2014 .
- Australia "Great Emu War" - beep, beep, beep, we are at war , a day Spiegel Online, July 3, 2015
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Victoria Laurie: Controversy over WA's rabbit-proof fence plans. In: australiangeographic.com.au. February 21, 2013, accessed June 30, 2014 .
- ↑ a b Jenny Lau: Don't Fence Me In. (pdf) (No longer available online.) In: birdsaustralia.com .au. Birdlive Australia, archived from the original on July 14, 2014 ; accessed on June 28, 2014 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Emu War Defended , on trove.nla.gov.au, The Argus (Melbourne) November 19, 1932. Retrieved June 30, 2014.
- ↑ The emu wars. Australian Broadcasting Corporation , January 26, 2014, accessed June 27, 2014 .
- ↑ a b Machine Guns Sent against Emu Pest. In: trove.nla.gov.au. Canberra Times, November 3, 1932, accessed June 29, 2014 .
- ^ First Shot on Emu War at trove.nla.gov.au, Daily News (Perth) November 3, 1932. Retrieved June 29, 2014.
- ↑ a b A New Strategy In A War On The Emu. trove.nla.gov.au, accessed June 27, 2014 .
- ^ A b Johnson Murray: Feathered foes: soldier settlers and Western Australia's Emu War of 1932 . In: Journal of Australian Studies . tape 88 , 2006, ISSN 1444-3058 , pp. 147 ff . ( com.au ). Feathered foes: soldier settlers and Western Australia's Emu War of 1932 ( Memento of the original dated November 16, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Too Quick for Machine Guns , at trove.nla.gov.au, Canberra Times, November 5, 1932. Retrieved June 26, 2014.
- ↑ Over the Speaker's Chair , on trove.nla, Canberra Times, November 19, 1932. Retrieved June 26, 2014.
- ↑ JS Crawford: History of the State Vermin Barrier Fences ( Memento of the original from July 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on archive.agric.wa.gov.au, English. Retrieved July 1, 2014.
