The Australian native animals culled for farms and human safety

An ACM analysis of the state environment department's "licences to harm" register found kangaroos and emus (a maximum of 11,817) were usually killed because they ate grass and drank water used for human activities like farming, or over crop damage.

Corellas (64,940), lorikeets (2238) and sulphur-crested cockatoos (25,378) were shot mainly for spoiling crops, while burrowing bare-nosed wombats (2083) caused erosion or damaged fences and other farm infrastructure.

Sheep and cattle farmer John Lowe said wombat burrows could be deadly.

With a healthy cover of grass, the holes - which can be up to 30 metres long and several metres deep - are invisible to farmers driving through paddocks in a motorbike or quad bike.

The 59-year-old from Lithgow west of the Blue Mountains was saved only by the roll bar on his quad bike when a wheel plunged into a burrow in March 2017.

"We have an issue getting around the property because wombats don't have only one burrow and that's home," he said.

"They tend to also have holiday homes and migrate between them."

Mr Lowe, who has applied for a licence to harm for wombats in the past, said it was important for land managers to control erosion and safety carefully.

It was against the law to hurt native animals in NSW, a spokesperson for the Department of Planning and Environment said.

"Prior to issuing a licence to harm, the applicant must demonstrate that non-lethal mitigation measures have been exhausted," they said.

Among the reasons for exceptions to the law was when animals posed a risk to human health.

Disease dangers were commonly cited for removing the notorious white ibis (about 35,000), also known as the "bin chicken".

Nearly 9000 of the long-billed wading birds were targeted across the Coffs Harbour region and Camden in south-western Sydney over just three licences.

But permits to kill magpies and kookaburras were often handed out for aggression and threat to people's safety.

Some applicants were given permission to shoot or remove single birds.

The department allowed a resident of the Blacktown area in western Sydney to kill a lone laughing kookaburra over property damage in January 2019.

Another solo kookaburra was caught and released in the NSW north coast Byron area a year later because of its aggressive behaviour.

Known for their belligerent swooping, magpies were culled alone and in pairs across different parts of the state, including Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour, the Central Coast, Upper Hunter and Broken Hill.

The five-year record of National Parks and Wildlife Service licences covers the period August 2017 to February 2023.

Each licence sets a maximum number of animals to be killed or harmed.

Permits are granted if a native animal threatens human safety, damages property, or causes "economic hardship".

Not all animals are killed under the system.

People living in leafy suburbs of Sydney and regional centres are more likely to have issues with brushtail possums, often over property damage and health risks.

But the city-loving marsupials are caught and released.

While kangaroos make up the vast majority of animals killed under the "licence to harm" register at 1.89 million, the total does not include commercial harvesting.

This is counted separately and numbers are governed by quotas based on population surveys.

Under the regime about 2.6 million kangaroos were killed in the five years to 2023.

On the NSW western plains alone there were an estimated 2.9 million red kangaroos overall in 2020, down from 6.4 million four years earlier.

In the same year, the grey kangaroo population was about 6.3 million on the western plains but dropped to 3.1 million in 2020.

Gerard Glover, who runs a sheep and cattle property near Brewarrina in the state's north west, said when the green shoots appeared on a crop it could attract mobs of between 50 and 250 at a time.

"They do hammer a crop," he said.

Mr Glover, who relies on a kangaroo harvester to keep numbers under control, said the animals could also damage fences and get bogged in ground tanks.

The national environment group said most Australian farmers were doing the right thing.

"Not only are they finding ways to live with nature peacefully, but many are playing an active role in caring for the animals and plants they share the land with and revegetating land that has been damaged," Australian Conservation Foundation nature campaigner Peta Bulling said.

But she also said the country was "chronically ill" and people needed to see that animals were not coming into our home, but us into theirs.

"We've crossed some lines that we will never be able to recover from and it's up to us to change the trajectory of land management in this country by learning to live alongside nature."

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