Last week I did this cartoon about cassowaries, I had been meaning to do it for ages and it turned out to be quite timely. I unwittingly became a player in the dark and mysterious politics of cassowary conservation.

In January of this year I went to Brisbane for the Queensland state election and I did a different cartoon in which I unkindly suggested that a cassowary would make a better premier than either Campbell Newman or Annastacia Palaszczuk. How prescient.

Illustration: First Dog on the Moon/The Guardian

After the cartoon was published I was contacted by someone calling himself the “cassowary man”. He claimed he was from far north Queensland and said his name was Paul. He seemed very nice and was enthusiastic about cassowaries and delighted with the cassowary in my cartoon. Thus began my cassowary odyssey.

The southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius johnsonii) is a large flightless Wikipedia entry that looks like a mutated dinosaur death-emu. If you want cassowary facts I’m not your cartoonist, if you want a feelings based cassowarynalysis you’re in the right place.

Paul the Cassowary Man can also help with that, he talks very excitedly and a lot about cassowaries all the time. He sent a cassowary into space to raise cassowary awareness. No really, he stuck a toy cassowary and a camera on a balloon and sent it above the atmosphere. He has spent a lot of his own money on cassowary conservation and is just one of the many interesting folk in the battle to save this frankly ridiculous creature.

The trouble with cassowaries is that they have been wandering about the jungles of Queensland for many thousands of years eating quandongs and probably terrifying each other, then humans turned up with dogs and cars and started destroying their habitat.

Illustration: First Dog on the Moon/The Guardian

An injured cassowary is a problem for everyone because when fully grown they are almost 2m tall, weigh up to 70kg and have been known to kill people. Up until recently there was a cassowary rehab at Mission Beach where troubled birds could go. Specially trained rangers would take injured birds of all ages to the rehab, the vets would fix them up where possible and then bung them back in the jungle. Then the funding was cut.

Funding cuts to services for interesting animals are not unique to the cassowary but frankly koalas have had it too good for too long. The cassowary rehab used to be overseen by the government, and according to Graham the Cassowary Vet that worked pretty well. Then the management was outsourced to “environmental groups” who had priorities other than the cassowary so things became complicated and funding became a problem.

The government recently “reinstated” $50,000 worth of funding. Some folk have kindly suggested it was because of my petulant cartoon. While I did have a Twitter conversation with both the premier and environment minister, and would happily take credit for this funding being reinstated, that would be too self aggrandising even for me (which is really saying something).

Local newspaper the Tully Times very kindly gave your correspondent credit for saving the cassowary rehab when (a) it wasn’t me, and (b) we didn’t save it anyway. But I’ve never had a cartoon on the front page of a newspaper before so that was pretty good; we are getting it framed and we are going to hang it here in the pool room at the First Dog on the Moon Institute.

I have already been made an Honorary Friend of the Cassowary and I have not ever even met one that is reward enough for one so humble as I.

Unfortunately $50,000 is only enough for the short term. Previously the cassowary rehab was able to house any baby or adult birds that needed to be cared for. It is built on land that was bequeathed to the government specifically for the benefit of cassowaries. The other key requirement the service needs is rangers who are trained to handle injured cassowaries because frankly they are big and hate everyone. (As they say up north, “Only a fool invites an injured cassowary to a picnic.”)

Illustration: First Dog on the Moon/The Guardian

Graham the Cassowary Vet has been instructed to euthanise any adult birds that show up. It happened just this week. On Tuesday he euthanised an adult cassowary because the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, after much toing and froing and not knowing what they were doing, told him to kill the bird.

They then put out a press release saying they didn’t tell him to kill the bird. According to Graham, the young female cassowary was starving but otherwise ok. However, despite a specific request from him, Graham was not permitted to take the bird to the rehab where a diet of cheeseburgers and a week on the couch watching The Bachelor would have gotten her sorted and back in the forest terrifying the quandong trees.

The department put out a press release on Friday saying:

Queensland’s government is launching an investigation into how it deals with injured cassowaries after the “regrettable” killing of one of the endangered birds.

The whole thing is a quandong flavoured shemozzle.

Accordingly, I have committed to doing a cartoon every day for the next 200 years to draw attention to the plight of this magnificent alien bird-beast. You can see some of them on this page.

And frankly, if my not-very-good cassowary drawings can encourage/embarrass the Queensland government into reinstating all the funding for the cassowary rehab then our democracy is clearly broken. Once we have the original funding restored I can stop drawing all these stupid cassowary cartoons and then perhaps we can answer the question, why hasn’t this marvelous murderous prehistoric dinobird captured the nation’s imagination? What is so great about koalas anyway?

Meanwhile if you want to donate you can do it here: www.cassowaryconservation.asn.au