camels

I seem to remember reading somewhere they are being culled. They round them up and I think they were being turned into dog food.

The slaughter of camels for human consumption commenced at Alice Springs in the 1980s.

The Conservation Commission of the Northern Territory detailed aerial survey in 1994 over the southern half of the NT indicated a population of approx. 60,000 camels. The 2001 survey by the Northern Territory Parks & Wildlife Commission has estimated the present feral camel population in the Northern Territory to be in excess of 200,000. The likely Australian population is now 600,000.

As an alternative to Government controlled culling programs, CACIA has developed markets for trade in live camels and camel meat.

They are a real problem Kharn. There are a couple of previous threads on the problem here;

US camel cull comments

and here

Outback Camel Population.

The damage I have seen them wrought in the remote outback areas of the interior is beyond belief.


Cheers Mick

They also come into the communities, when it's dry, looking for water. They cause damage to taps (kicking them to get water) and have been known to prise evap airconds off walls!

Worse is when they are near our airfields as the RFDS or our weekly mail plane is expected. We have to drive them off so the stupid things don't run on the strip!

I have been told that in drought they eat a poisonous bush out here. Whilst it doesn't kill them it renders their meat unfit for anything, even dog meat. We had camel shooters in our community that used to send 4 or 5 tonne of meat a fortnight to Perth. But their contract got cancelled and they left.

Gidday

I suppose it all comes down to Government (state and federal) attitude to the environment. It camels were a threat to agriculture or ate iron ore, there would be a bounty on them. There are no votes in protecting remote Australia from camels. And no votes means no action.


Cheers

Rocco

They appear to be even worse in WA than in the NT. With numbers of feral camels estimated at over a million, the number is doubling every eight years. They eat most types of the desert vegetation and compete with native animals for this food supply. They are damaging water holes wells and station stock troughs.

The significant damage that camels have done and are doing to fragile ecosystems, cultural sites, isolated communities, and pastoral properties has gone largely unnoticed by the bulk of Australia’s population because of the sparse population in these remote areas.

Culls are not big, and cost is huge. Hardly viable to transport as pet meat from the remote areas where they abound.

Feral Camels

Note the map showing their range.

Motherhen

Hi Kharn,

I believe they should be culled ( or sold if it can be done). They are feral and doing untold damage to our environment.


Cheers Wilko

I fear tha gov. money is going on meetings in the Alice and not putting men in choppers with bullets or building infrastructure to support small local communities to process the carcass. Cause we gotta have a meeting first.

There was news recently that camel meat can be fatal to dogs because of toxins the camels pick up from grazing some native plants. Link here.
Could be another difficulty in the way of building a pet food industry based on camels.
But no question the culling needs to continue as they do enormous damage.

Cheers,

Val

Please don't send any over here, we have enough problems already with the Brush Tailed Possum.
223 head shot from a chopper should work, as it has done with a lot of Red Deer in our high country.
If they are not worth recovering the Dingos will get fat or there will be a lot of bones laying about.
But then someone will have to pay for that, the bulk of the human population that live near the coast would not want to contribute to that, I guess.