Throughout the weeks of bitter protest and heated community debate that followed, one of the most vocal opponents to the now annual cull of kangaroos in Canberra found her voice.

Images of animals being killed have lived on in the mind of campaigner Carolyn Drew.

''When you see something like that happen in front of you, the shock and horror of it isn't something you can really ever get over,'' she said this week.

''You tell yourself this is something that can never happen again and you do what you can to stop it.''

At the centre of the heated protests against Canberra's annual kangaroo cull, Drew is now a spokeswoman for Animal Liberation ACT and helped to win a temporary stay of execution for nearly 1500 eastern grey kangaroos in the ACT Administrative Appeals Tribunal on Thursday.

''In 2008 they put hessian bags over the large fences which kept the kangaroos in at Belconnen and they were funnelled down inside a big gate by the scientists, and then the shooter would shoot them,'' she said.

''To see how the kangaroos reacted to that, with mums looking very worried and their joeys stuck outside not knowing what on earth to do, it really coalesced us as a group and that continues today.''

The continuing culls have become a lightning rod for community debate, with the ACT government spending $190,000 this year on efforts to maintain populations at appropriate levels to minimise impact on other flora and fauna.

The threat to biodiversity in Canberra's native reserves is a key justification for the night-time exercise, with rapid deterioration blamed on extensive overgrazing by the growing kangaroo population.

Opponents of the cull have worked each year to disrupt and delay the cull's progress, including efforts last year to exhume animal carcasses and study their cause of death.

''We are motivated all year round,'' Drew said.

''It's high alert when we know the cull is coming up, and this year people have come from Victoria, far north Queensland, South Australia and New South Wales to stop the killing.''

Drew was not on hand for recent digging at burial pits but she said volunteers and wildlife carers who helped dig and retrieve bodies were scarred by the experience.

''Many of them don't ever want to talk publicly about it because it is too painful,'' she said.

''The analogy I use would be someone who has been in a war zone, who has been through hell and just doesn't want to come out and talk about it.

''I don't mean to be disrespectful but that is what it is like.''

In the growing bush capital, many of us are used to seeing kangaroos on an almost daily basis.

Before ordering the cull, the Territory and Municipal Services Minister had his own run-in with a kangaroo in June.

In an event destined to make yet more international headlines, Shane Rattenbury startled a kangaroo during his morning run through Ainslie. The angry roo scratched the ACT Greens member before hopping away.

Rattenbury, a former director of international campaigns for Greenpeace, admits culling can be divisive within the broader environmental movement, which is part of his core political constituency.

"This is a difficult issue for the environment movement generally,'' he said.

"There are people from the environment movement on both sides of this argument.

''There are those who are arguing the cull is an unfortunate necessity in order to protect the grasslands, and those are people who have a strong environmental bent who are looking at the whole ecosystem.

"Then those who oppose the cull I would say are part of the Greens constituency as well. But they have a view that the kangaroos should not be culled. And clearly that comes from a sense that the imbalance is not caused by the kangaroos and that it is unfair that the kangaroos have to pay the price. And I have sympathy for that view as well.''

Rattenbury says the government is actively exploring alternatives to culling to control kangaroo numbers and protect the environment.

"I think we need to keep exploring alternatives, whether that's fertility control, different land management practices or other options that may emerge,'' he said.

"We certainly shouldn't just accept the cull as a default. That said, there is a land management job that needs to be done and these ecosystems - the lowland grasslands and the grassy woodlands - the ACT has some very important remnant areas that are both nationally and locally significant, and so we have an obligation to protect those and ensure they're in some kind of balance.''

Media coverage and sustained protests ensure that kangaroo culls have a higher profile in the ACT than in other parts of Australia.

Rattenbury says this is inevitable because safety issues related to the closeness of parks to homes means that shooting needs to be well-publicised.

"Certainly because of the safety issues with the parks being right within the urban area, we have to be very transparent about it and advise the community that it's taking place,'' he said. "That provides, I think, a particular focus.''

Clare Henderson, executive director of the Conservation Council ACT Region, says her organisation would prefer kangaroo culls were not needed. "However, in the circumstances of demonstrated overgrazing and the need to protect our precious endangered ecological communities and nature reserves that support a range of species, kangaroo culls are an unfortunate necessity,'' she said.

"The culls, however, have to be undertaken in a humane manner and be underpinned by a solid scientific case to ensure the ongoing viability of kangaroo numbers. We understand new methods of control such as reproductive measures are being trialled with indications of a potential success; however, in the interim measures are needed now to reduce the impacts of overgrazing.''

A spokeswoman for the Territory and Municipal Services directorate says there are relatively few reports by drivers of damage to cars by the animals, but rangers estimate about 1000 accidents each year based on approximate numbers of kangaroo bodies collected.

Last year, 157 crash reports in the ACT were attributed to kangaroos, representing 1.9 per cent of all reported accidents.

Vehicle damage is not a factor considered by authorities when assessing the need for conservation culls.

Explaining the scientific basis for the cull, the TAMS spokeswoman cited four peer-reviewed studies from publications including the Journal of Applied Ecology and continuing research by the Environment and Sustainable Development Directorate that seeks to document the relationship between kangaroo population growth rates and damage to ground vegetation and other species.

Drew rejects the scientific explanations and says the culling will probably lead to kangaroo species being placed at risk of extinction.

''You have an emotional response mainly because you can see the absolute stupidity of it,'' she said.

''People's indifference is what has killed a lot of animal species over the years. Just look at koalas in Queensland in the 1930s.

''On the one hand our philosophy is to say there should be no killing of animals at all, but on the other hand we are also concerned that where the government seeks to kill kangaroos, that killing should actually be humane.''

Drew says the bodies of joeys dug from the ground last year showed that animals were often shot in the jaw and neck, not in the head as claimed by proponents of the cull.

Dane, an ACT region farmer and hunter referred to Fairfax Media by the New South Wales Game Council, says culling of feral animals is a fact of life in Australia.

A shooter for more than 30 years,

he asked that his surname not be published.

''As with any animal which becomes a burden in the population, and that can destroy natural habitats for other animals, there has to be some control measures,'' he said.

''Unfortunately some of those measures which exist for other animals, like disease and flood and famine, don't exist at the moment in populations of [kangaroos]. Hunting and pest eradication for me on that side is strictly to preserve the natural fauna and flora for other species.''

Dane says he is actively involved in emergency animal care and is considered by some to be a ''tree hugger'' but that he regularly shoots feral animals including foxes and pigs as part of pest control on his property.

He says some opposition to killing of animals comes from outdated views of shooting.

"I don't shoot kangaroos myself because I don't have the permits to do it, but I wouldn't have any qualms about doing it," he said.

"The stereotypes on hunting come in part from the people who have tarnished our industry and our sport. There is a small percentage that go about the way they do things in a way society won't accept and shouldn't accept.

"In saying that, the coin can be flipped on the people who protest and the way they go about their things. I have been to a couple of protests as an observer and I have been threatened and had some pretty disturbing stuff said to me."

A regular hunter, Dane says he does not have an emotional response when shooting feral animals.

''I don't have any emotion because it is a task that needs to be done, but you have to be humane. But it is my task to preserve the habitat and livestock I own. I see it as a bit of a game to outwit the fox or outwit the pig, which is a feral pest.

''Alternatively, when it's shooting to provide for your family and where you are taking an animal's life, I can be a bit ritualistic and say a prayer for the animal and its sacrifice,'' he said.

With this year's cull on hold until early next month, the ACT government is concerned the eight-week operation using two shooters will not be possible in the remaining available time.

Constrained by the availability of contract shooters, the most appropriate time in the life cycle of kangaroos and their young and the need to complete the cull in the coldest weeks of winter to protect public safety, campaigners including Animal Liberation ACT and the Australian Society for Kangaroos could yet emerge as winners.

Regardless of the immediate outcome, Carolyn Drew says her fight is just the beginning.

''We are working against the government's lines about the need for killing these animals and that is a hard task,'' she said.

''It sounds very gruesome to most people but we don't plan on giving up.''