Four wildlife groups are claiming that kangaroos are "on the brink of extinction" in three Australian states. If you read to the end of the article you find that that means they believe that "there are less than five kangaroos per square kilometre across most of NSW, South Australia and Queensland". OK, even accepting their figures on face value according to Wikipedia the land areas of these three state are 809,444 sq km, 1,043,514 sq km, and 1,852,642 sq km respectively, for a total of 3,705,600 sq km. In other words they believe that because kangaroo numbers between those three states have dropped below approximately 18,528,000 they are now "on the brink of extinction".
OK, lets see what other animals are also "on the brink of extinction". First up: Cows according to the figures available from Meat & Livestock Australia we get a total of approximately 19.5 million cows in those three states, well that is a little worrying, but there not quite "on the brink of extinction"... yet. OK, how about Cats? According to statistics from PetNet those three states (and the NT) have between them a minuscule total of 1,474,000 domestic cats. Oh well, it's not like I'm overly fond of cats anyhow. (Obviously there are also some feral cats, but there numbers would not be sufficient to put cat numbers over the 18.5 million "brink of extinction" mark) Well since the cats are goners, what about Dogs? Again from PetNet we get 2,411,000, darn it, while it's a bit better than the cats, their still quite blatantly facing extinction as well.
Wait a second, what about Humans? Going back to Wikipedia we find that these three states populations are: 6,889,100 (NSW), 1,584,500 (SA), and 4,182,100 (QLD), or 12,655,700. Oh no, Humans are "on the brink of extinction".
