About Kangaroo Lace

The Kangaroo industry in Australia is complex. Most of the Kangaroos harvested are used in the Pet Food industry, and these Pet Food guys do not care about preserving the hides. Also, the majority of hides for leather are chrome tanned and the leather is used in the shoe trade, mostly soccer and football boots under contract with companies like Nike and Addidas.
The chrome tanning process is cheaper and faster than vegetable tanning.

For lacing we need vegetable tanned leather. There are only 2-3 commercial tanneries in Australia that will process Kangaroo hides and they much prefer to chase the chrome tanned market. So quality suppliers end up sourcing the hides from traders and sending it to specialized small tanneries in the bush. Their capacity is small and output is reasonably slow.
High end suppliers are very particular about the quality of the leather they source so this can also hold
up the supply....as well as drive the price up.

The Kangaroos in Australia are wild animals and are not farmed. They are all harvested by individual hunters who are paid per hide under license. Although Australia has a reasonable population of Kangaroos, only so many are allowed to be harvested each year... and only in restricted areas.
Because they are not an overly large animal there is less incentive and less reward per hide, so the numbers are down.

So when crafty folks holler about the price of quality Kangaroo lace, and end users holler about the price of the crafted items made from that lace, it might be nice to have everyone just sit back and think about how many Kangaroos have to be harvested to produce enough hides to meet the growing demand for the hides, the leather, and the lace.

The drought in Australia had a major impact on the number of viable animals that were under license to take. And Kangaroos, like so many other animals in nature, will curtail their breeding and even commit genocide with young still in the pouch to save themselves in times of major hardship.

We all love our Kangaroo lace, but how many of us actually think about or appreciate where that lace
comes from.....and why it's gotten so expensive in the last few years.

Just some food for thought.

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