An Australian farm owner has posted footage of what happens when you try to take back an animal paddock from a hoard of jumping kangaroos, showing the incredibly nimble critters in a stampede.

Filmed on a farm in Nymagee, New South Wales by Marie Harley last February, she said her family unwittingly provoked the stampede when they drove through the area in a 4x4 vehicle.

Harley and her parents had driven to the paddock where they keep rams to investigate how many kangaroos were now living in the area. Footage of what happened next has now been posted to Facebook racking up views of more than 830,000.

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"We knew there was a massive amount of kangaroos in the 100 acre paddock we use for the rams, so Dad and I decided to take mum up in the old land cruiser for a look and took the iPad along with me,” Harley told ViralHog.

“I estimate there to be approximately 900-1000 roos in that paddock at the time. Thought it was worth while taking footage of it as people don't realize the enormity of the problem.”

The kangaroo is a national symbol for Australia and occupies a space on the country’s coat of arms.

In 2017, it was reported by that the kangaroo population had almost doubled to 47 million since 2010. Kangaroos are often blamed by farmers for crop and land degradation in rural Australia and to keep numbers down the government operates a strict process for shooting the animal humanely.

The government has a code of practice for the humane shooting of kangaroos and anyone without a permit is liable to face a large fine. The code of practice states that every person engaged in culling must have a licence and that the shooter must have a primary objective of killing the animal humanely and instantly.

“Where an individual kangaroo or wallaby is injured, no further animals can be shot until all reasonable efforts have been made to locate and kill the injured animal,” the code adds.

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But animal activist groups are opposed to the measures. Animal Liberation South Australia is one such group fighting to stop the killing of kangaroos.

The group has come out against culling, saying it “offers no protections for the pouch and joeys”.

“The poor kangaroo has become a convenient scapegoat, to say they are damaging the land is propaganda to promote the widespread slaughter,” according to Animal Liberation South Australia. “It is the overgrazing by introduced sheep and cattle, maintained at high densities on the same pastures all year round, which is causing serious land degradation.”

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