Now, the Australian Museum, venerable guardian of the nation's heritage, hopes to change both images - and sustain populations of the marsupial and unique native flora and fauna by turning culled specimens into roast dinners.

"I urged us to take a more proactive role. (Now) we've reinvigorated the museum, its vision, its mission," says quick-talking biological science professor Michael Archer, the head of the Sydney museum.

The plan, which has its critics, is raising dollar signs before the eyes of kangaroo shooters and exporters, who have long dreamed of selling millions of Rooburgers through fast-food joints around the world.

The Kangaroo Industries Association, whose members export about A$200 million (US$100 million) worth of meat and skins a year, is right behind the museum's plan which it says will give kangaroo farming the credibility it lacks.

"Kangaroos are considered a pest (in outback Australia)," says the association's head, John Kelly. "This is saying 'kangaroos are quite a valuable thing'."

SCIENTIFIC INTEREST

Archer became involved through the museum's work in fossil fields showing that millennia ago, crocodiles lived in trees and killer carnivorous kangaroos stalked the Australian landscape.

He concluded that despite its vast size, Australia risked a growing conservation crisis - and farming kangaroos would help to preserve native flora and fauna.

His plan is to nurture kangaroo mobs, as groups of the animals are known, through feeding, promoting their commercial exploitation and studying the impact of harvesting on kangaroo populations and on land use.

Archer, whose project will be supported by New South Wales state's national parks agency and the national government, also sees a role for Australia's Aboriginal people, who traditionally hunted kangaroos for meat.

"The indigenous community does not belong in a museum tray with a label on it," he says. "Indigenous land management strategy and philosophy desperately needs to come alive and be applied."

The plan, which could involve amalgamating vast tracts of unfenced Australian grazing land to nurture kangaroos for harvest, is just months away from its first pilot test.

The museum has organised a consortium of 15 to 20 neighbouring outback farms and expects the first project to start by early next year, probably in the Murray-Darling Basin of New South Wales state, where the Darling River runs through the heart of kangaroo country.

FOOT AND MOUTH BONUS

Most 'roo meat is currently sold to European devotees of game. Europe's foot and mouth disease crisis helped push up export demand by 30 percent last year.

Currently, the government allows the culling of 5.5 million kangaroos a year out of a population of at least 35 million. Of these, about 3.3 million are used for meat and 5.8 million kilos (12.8 million pounds) a year is exported.

By contrast, Australia has a sheep population of 115 million producing an annual 300 million kilos of meat for export, while the country's 27 million cattle account for meat exports of more than 900 million kilos.

But in 10 to 20 years kangaroo farming could be bigger than the sheep and cattle industries in Australia's arid western rangelands, said Kelly of the kangaroo industry lobby.

Archer says one study in a typical Australian farming area showed that producing A$160 million worth of sheepmeat cost A$80 million in land degradation, where kangaroo harvesting could return A$130 million with no land degradation cost.

"It was enough to cause a lot of people start to think."