The Great Emu War: When Australia Sent Soldiers After Birds

In late 1932, the Australian government deployed soldiers from the Royal Australian Artillery, armed with two Lewis machine guns and ten thousand rounds of ammunition. Their target was the emu. That's correct. A population of approximately twenty thousand emus. Last week, we discussed how a stray dog nearly triggered a war. It seems this week, the animals are one of the primary combatants. So, this was a formal declaration of war? Not formally, no. It was designated a military operation. But in the press, and in history, it's known as the Great Emu War. It began after ex-soldier farmers in Western Australia petitioned the Minister of Defence, Sir George Pearce.

They were struggling through the Great Depression, and their wheat crops were being decimated. Decimated by emus. Yes. The birds were migrating and found the new farmland to be, uh, an easy source of food. The farmers, many of them veterans, asked for military assistance. Minister Pearce agreed. And the assistance provided was machine guns. Two Lewis guns. The thinking was that professional soldiers could efficiently cull the population and protect the farms. It was also seen as a way to show government support for the struggling veterans. So the troops deploy. Major G.P.W. Meredith is in command. What were the initial engagements like?

They were, uh, ineffective. The machine-gunners' plans for firing into dense masses of emus were quickly frustrated. The birds were exceptionally mobile. I would imagine so. When fired upon, they didn't panic in a predictable way. They scattered into innumerable small units. They were too fast for the trucks, and their erratic movements made them almost impossible targets for the machine guns. So the military hardware was a non-factor. Largely. One contemporary report stated, quote, "The Emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics." After the first attempt, the field force withdrew. The media began to take notice.

It was becoming a public relations embarrassment. The army couldn't subdue a population of flightless birds. Exactly. Major Meredith reportedly compared the emus to tanks, noting their resilience. They could take multiple hits and keep running. But they didn't just give up after the first attempt. No, Major Meredith was redeployed. The second phase was slightly more successful, in terms of numbers. They achieved a kill rate of about one hundred emus per week. One hundred a week, out of a population of twenty thousand. Correct. It was an unsustainable operation. They were using a vast amount of ammunition for very few confirmed kills—the final official tally was nine hundred eighty-six emus.

One commander was quoted as saying, "The emus have won every round so far." This feels less like a military campaign and more like a pest control problem being met with the wrong tools. That is the consensus analysis. This wasn't a failure of the soldiers, but a failure of the strategy. You cannot apply conventional military logic to an ecosystem. So the military eventually withdrew permanently. What happened to the farms? And the emus? The government turned to other methods. They instituted a bounty system, and more importantly, they provided assistance for the construction of pest-exclusion fencing. Which, I assume, was more effective than machine guns.

Substantially. The fences actually addressed the root of the problem, which was emus getting into the crops. The military operation was quietly concluded in December 1932. And its legacy? It's a cautionary tale. It's often cited as an example of a government trying to provide a simple, forceful solution to a complex problem. The ambition was there, but as one analysis put it, they had to realize that ecosystems don't bend easily to military logic. It seems the emus never received that particular memo. They did not. They just kept running.