Nature camel

Published on August 12th, 2009 | by Derek Markham

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Australia Plans Airstrikes to Kill 650K Camels in Outback

August 12th, 2009 by

They are Australia’s largest invasive species, and the government is spending $19 million AUD to deal with the excess population of desert dwellers. The country’s solution? Slaughter them from helicopters and serve them up as camel burgers, camel pies, camel sausages, camel steaks, and camel mince.

Australia CamelAustralia’s wild camel population is out of control. An estimated 1 million roam the outback, destroying fragile ecosystems, fouling water holes, and causing a threat to endangered wildlife.

First brought to Australia by explorers in the 1840s from India and the Middle East, the feral camels are now capable of doubling their population every nine years. The one million camels cause intense competition with livestock for forage, and have been known to wreak havoc on water pipes and bathrooms in their search for water.

Environmentalists generally agree with the culling of the animals to help preserve native species, and point out that lean camel meat is healthier than beef or lamb and a good source of low cholesterol protein. However, animal rights groups say that birth control for the animals would be more humane than wholesale slaughter.

Those opposing the plan claim that with the camel population due to double in a decade, the culling would not be effective.

“What happens in 15 years when the numbers come back again? Do we waste another £9.5m.” – Paddy McHugh, camel catcher and exporter

News of the culling brought some namecalling from the press, with Erin Burnett, an anchor on CNBC, calling Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd “a serial killer”.

“He has launched air strikes – air strikes – against camels in the outback.” – Burnett

Burnett later said the comment was a joke, and invited Rudd to be a guest on her show.

Image: wollombi at Flickr under CC License

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About the Author

lives in southwestern New Mexico and digs bicycles, simple living, organic gardening, sustainable lifestyle design, slacklining, bouldering, and permaculture. He loves good food, with fresh roasted chiles at the top of his list of favorites. Catch up with Derek on Twitter, RebelMouse, Google+, or at his natural parenting site, Natural Papa!


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  • http://www.pg-aria.com ehsan

    we are interested to buy these camel we are buying as many as 50k camel a month we do all shipment and slaughter there or ship them overseas

  • Yusuf salim Alkhulaqi

    We can afford to ship these camels to Yemen, if only Australian Government can give us a chance to help reduce the Number of there wild Camels instead of killing them

  • Yusuf salim Alkhulaqi

    We need these Camels and we are capable of shipping them to Yemen, no need to kill them

  • Ben Bechir

    Hi
    at first excuse the quality of my english
    I read that the Australia gonna kill thousand camels. It’s bad.
    I am ready to receive here in Tunisia the maximum of camels you can send. Can you help me find an organization or people volunteered to transport the camels from Australia to Tunisia.
    My best wishes
    F. Bechir Ben Saidi
    tel: 00216-21008931
    mail: abcd19@gmail.com

  • JOHN l. mOORE

    Use them for the needy: ask for donations to ship the
    foodstuffs to anywhere they can be of use. Ungodly to kill a nutrious animal and discard it. It is inhumane to destroy food to the needy. I cant believe the callous ideas that are spewed upon us.

  • HowardG

    Hey stupid people – you can read, right? Look up. Not intellectually challenged are you?

    The quote is: “News of the culling brought some namecalling from the press, with Erin Burnett, an anchor on CNBC, calling Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd “a serial killer”.
    “He has launched air strikes – air strikes – against camels in the outback.” – Burnett
    Burnett later said the comment was a joke, and invited Rudd to be a guest on her show.”

    Erin Burnett is clearly dimwitted or plain dumb: first to use the term “airstrike” then to ask Prime Minister Rudd to appear on ‘her’ show! He has far better things to do than share airtime with a self aggrandising, melodramatic bimbo – yes she is infantile… and blonde! Reassuring how people sterotype themselves.

    And “aistrike” –noun
    the bombing or strafing of a city, enemy force, etc., by military aircraft: The air strike devastated the enemy’s submarine base.

    Animal culling/hunting/management from helicopters IS routinely done in Australiasia. NZ keeps Thar, feral goats, deer and Chamois at manageable levels exactly by chopper culls.

    Angie – please take your emotions out for a walk, they need air. The animals are not being ‘blamed’. And Australia IS OFFICIALLY FAR BETTER than Palin (how THAT works grammatically as a forced mixed metahphor escapes us!) I live in Aus, have done in a number of other countries and know the US well. 80 million handguns is no recommendation.

    I’ll guarantee there are more FERAL NON-NATIVE INTRODUCED CAMELS in Aus, let alone their rest of the world population, than Grizzlies remaining!

    Camel meat? There is no abattoir in Norther Territory.

    Do your research – that’s like homework children – then comment with intelligence. There is nothing dumber than ignorance. The information is freely available. Best …

  • Valerie

    You’d think all that camel meat would be better of sent to some developing country where people need the protein.

  • disco

    Kill em all. Foul invasive monsters. They are not native. Kill them. It is not like they are supposed to be there. If you are a Christie and support the god crap, then your god did not mean them to be there, so kill em.

  • Angie

    Why not slaughter them by air strike? Why not slaughter a few million human beings because we’re breeding like horny rabbits who can’t control our own birth rates? For the same reason. If anything is a threat to the planet, it’s us. I’m so sick and tired of blame being put on animals every time a species’ population interferes with our luxurious bubble lives. It proves a total lack of respect for life. A form of birth control surely would be more humane than slaughtering thousands of camel families. It flat out is inhumane and shows a total insensitivity to other living things. I say take out a few million human beings instead. Oh, but no, we’re much more important than their silly little pea brained useless lives. That’s right. Go for it. Australia is officially no better than Sarah Palin trying to slaughter off thousands of grizzlies based on fabricated scientific lies.

  • aloha2436

    I live in australia, and they are a pest. Why not airsrike them?

  • http://twitter.com/olhonatv OlhoNaTV

    It’s so camelo!

  • mohamed farouk

    Dear All, i have a good idea to solve this problem of camels in AUSTRALIA , we have the ability to import any quantity of camels , but Australian government must arrange every thing about shipping them to my country and if the government need professionals in how to catch camels we can offer and we are very serious and can start at once , so if need to start just mail me or call 002-012-5953303 .

  • heh

    Yeah.. why not just set up a food industry around it with numbers like those, managed properly it could be a sustainable source of food while managing the camel population for free? I’d eat camel.. I think.

  • David Wallace

    So if camels are so tasty why not harvest them like cows, in a short while the problem will be gone if people can make a profit from killing them?

  • Robert

    The biggest reason they want cull the camels but really don’t want to admit that it is the main reason. Camels knock down fences, not just some but any they want too. They even knock down home fences in small towns. Now you might not thick so many damaged fences are bad but farmers have to manage their livestock and that livestock have to be kept off public roads. While barbed wire fences deter cattle and sheep, the camels just push straight through them. Lighten up on the US stupidity, you can’t shoot camels from a helicopter and then sell the meat, it’s a bloody big camel, strictly shooting from trucks,then hauling the carcass and maybe searching from the air.

  • sexy_you

    Australians have gone eeeeya with camel meat

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