The senior government bureaucrat overseeing the territory's parks and nature reserves has criticised animal rights campaigners for their response to an official autopsy of a dead kangaroo found in Crace on Monday.
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Campaigners opposed to the government's shooting of eastern grey kangaroos claimed the dead animal shown in a widely distributed photo with serious head wounds had been killed as part of the controversial cull.
ACT Parks and Conservation director Daniel Iglesias said activists had disregarded autopsy results released by the Territory and Municipal Services directorate "out of hand and without any good reason".
The report said the kangaroo, found at the Gungaderra Grasslands, had injuries consistent with being hit by a car, while vets believed its head had been cut with an "implement such as a knife" to make it look like the animal had died from a gunshot.
A Territory and Municipal Services spokesman later said "the animal has been intentionally manipulated and the photograph staged".
"It is not normal behaviour for a kangaroo to try to crawl under a fence and there was no evidence of any soil disturbed in the area," the spokesman said. "These are disturbing actions from those involved."
Mr Iglesias said the report had been dismissed by opponents of the cull, set to see 2466 kangaroos shot in 2015, because it did not support their claims. About 2500 more will be killed in 2016 under the current licence.
"I think this is at the core of the argument here," he said. "No matter what we as public servants put up in good faith, there is always a reason why it is inaccurate or wrong, purely because it doesn't line up with a small part of the community's philosophical views."
He said thousands of kangaroos with similar fatal injuries were found each year around the ACT and vets recognised their deaths were caused by cars. He said the animal's body had been dragged and made to look like it was stuck under a fence.
"Those are the facts and if those facts don't line up with what some people want to hear, then that's not my concern. My concern is to come to what the facts are," Mr Iglesias said.
On Tuesday, Animal Liberation ACT spokeswoman Carolyn Drew strongly refuted suggestions her members would tamper with the body of any animal.
Ms Drew could not say if the person who took the photo, later shared on social media, was a member of Animal Liberation ACT.
"I don't know why the government is automatically assuming it's one of the Animal Liberation activists or anybody related to Animal Liberation that's done this," she said.
"We stand for animal liberation: it doesn't mean going around and stabbing dead or alive kangaroos in the head. The government has also not mentioned the fact this kangaroo was found within one of their own enclosures, a research enclosure on Gungaderra nature grasslands reserve."
Ms Drew said she had been given the photo by someone who was walking in the area about 7am on Monday.
"That wasn't just a normal wire fence that kangaroo was under. That kangaroo was under one of those very heavy temporary fences that are interlinked and the fence hadn't been moved to put the body underneath it.
"The photograph's not manipulated. From our point of view, it's a genuine photograph."
Territory and Municipal Services is urging anyone with any information about the dead kangaroo to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
On Friday it was revealed 20 kangaroo carcasses with gunshot wounds were found dumped in a creek between Murrumbateman and Gundaroo in March, in what was believed to be one of the largest illegal cullings in recent history.
