page_title: Emu War
section_title: After the War
hierarchical_section_title: Emu War / After the War
caption_attribution_description: current view of rabbit proof fence near Lake King, Western Australia in 2005
context_page_description: The Emu War, also called the Great Emu War, was a military operation in Australia. The army tried to kill many emus because they were pests. The war was fought in late 1932. Farmers were having trouble with the many emus invading the Campion district of Western Australia. Soldiers used Lewis guns to try to kill the emus, a large flightless bird. The media called it the "Emu War" when describing the military action. The army did kill some birds. The emu population stayed large and continued to destroy crops.
context_section_description: Throughout 1930 and onward, exclusion barrier fencing became a common way to keep emus out of agricultural areas. Such fencing also kept out other vermin, such as dingoes and rabbits).
  By December 1932, word of the Emu War had spread, reaching the United Kingdom. Some conservationists there protested the cull as "extermination of the rare emu". Dominic Serventy and Hubert Whittell, the eminent Australian ornithologists, described the "war" as "an attempt at the mass destruction of the birds".
  The war had been a failure and there were problems with the cull. But, the farmers of the region asked the army to fight the emu again in 1934, 1943, and 1948. Each time the government said no. They refused to fight the birds. Instead, the government continued the bounty system that had started in 1923. This was effective. During six-months of 1934, Western Australians killed 57,034 emu and claimed their bounties.
  In November 1950, Hugh Leslie, a newspaper editor and state and federal politician from Western Australia, complained about emus in federal parliament. He asked the Army Minister Josiah Francis to give .303 ammunition from the army to farmers to kill the emus. The minister approved giving 500,000 bullets to the farmers.
caption: Rabbit proof fence in 2005
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