Camels in Australia
Camels were brought to Australia from Pakistan and India by the British to help with exploration and load-carrying in the mid-1800s. Given the Australian outback's vast, arid landscape, camels were the only animals strong enough for the job.
Although it was not until the 1860s that camels began to arrive in Australia in large numbers the very first animal arrived by boat in 1840, the only one of four to survive the trip from the Canary Islands. By the early 20th century hundreds of camels had arrived in the country. They were tended by Muslim herders who were known as 'Afghans.'
Camels helped found the Outback city of Alice Springs and there is an Australian myth that the city's first piano arrived in the 1890s strapped to the back of a camel. It is estimated that 10,000 to 20,000 camels were imported between 1880 and 1907.
But by the early 1900s, there were trucks and trains to do this work, and camels were no longer useful. So the South Australian government ruled that they be destroyed.
This was unthinkable for the Asian camel herders. They disobeyed the order, and set the animals loose in the outback.
Although it was not until the 1860s that camels began to arrive in Australia in large numbers the very first animal arrived by boat in 1840, the only one of four to survive the trip from the Canary Islands. By the early 20th century hundreds of camels had arrived in the country. They were tended by Muslim herders who were known as 'Afghans.'
Camels helped found the Outback city of Alice Springs and there is an Australian myth that the city's first piano arrived in the 1890s strapped to the back of a camel. It is estimated that 10,000 to 20,000 camels were imported between 1880 and 1907.
But by the early 1900s, there were trucks and trains to do this work, and camels were no longer useful. So the South Australian government ruled that they be destroyed.
This was unthinkable for the Asian camel herders. They disobeyed the order, and set the animals loose in the outback.
Today's Australian camels are the great, great grandchildren of the animals that helped explore and establish modern Australia. There are 1.2 million camels in the Australian outback – the largest wild camel population in the world. Feral camels are found in the drier parts of Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory; the population is capable of doubling in size every nine years.
They are being culled because they are perceived to be an environmental problem and pests to farmers and they became fair game in 2009 when the government decided to spend AUD$19m to eradicate around 650,000 camels.
The decision has divided environmental groups. Some conservationists agree that the camels compete with native creatures for food and also cause damage in Aboriginal communities in their search for water, fracturing pipes and breaking air conditioning units.
They also severely impact upon native crops and upset the balance of the Outback's fragile eco-system. Others say it is wrong to blast the animals with guns from helicopters because many would be wounded but not killed.
Animal welfare groups, including the RSPCA, were upset by the idea of shooting camels from the air because they may not be killed outright. Hugh Wirth, president RSPCA Australia said, "You cannot cleanly kill, instantly kill, humanely kill a moving animal from a moving platform."
Even health campaigners had joined the row saying camels that are shot should not be left to rot on the ground - their meat should be used for meals because it is low in fat and has little cholesterol.
And camel exporter Paddy McHugh, who runs camel catching operations throughout Australia, has argued that a cull will be ineffective.
'What happens in 15 years when the numbers come back again? Do we waste another £9.5m,' McHugh said.
The feral camel population roams in herds across millions of square kilometres of desert country and they are being rounded up by helicopters and shot by crack marksmen. Private contractors often shoot camels dead from helicopters, leaving their remains where they fall in the desert.
They are being culled because they are perceived to be an environmental problem and pests to farmers and they became fair game in 2009 when the government decided to spend AUD$19m to eradicate around 650,000 camels.
The decision has divided environmental groups. Some conservationists agree that the camels compete with native creatures for food and also cause damage in Aboriginal communities in their search for water, fracturing pipes and breaking air conditioning units.
They also severely impact upon native crops and upset the balance of the Outback's fragile eco-system. Others say it is wrong to blast the animals with guns from helicopters because many would be wounded but not killed.
Animal welfare groups, including the RSPCA, were upset by the idea of shooting camels from the air because they may not be killed outright. Hugh Wirth, president RSPCA Australia said, "You cannot cleanly kill, instantly kill, humanely kill a moving animal from a moving platform."
Even health campaigners had joined the row saying camels that are shot should not be left to rot on the ground - their meat should be used for meals because it is low in fat and has little cholesterol.
And camel exporter Paddy McHugh, who runs camel catching operations throughout Australia, has argued that a cull will be ineffective.
'What happens in 15 years when the numbers come back again? Do we waste another £9.5m,' McHugh said.
The feral camel population roams in herds across millions of square kilometres of desert country and they are being rounded up by helicopters and shot by crack marksmen. Private contractors often shoot camels dead from helicopters, leaving their remains where they fall in the desert.
June 2011
Australian camels could be shot
to curb methane!
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Kill a camel, earn cash for cutting greenhouse gases: That offer may be coming soon in Australia, where vast numbers of the nonnative, methane-belching animals have been trampling the Outback for more than a century.
The government has proposed that killing camels be officially registered as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Australia has the world’s largest population of wild camels — an estimated 1.2 million — and considers them to be a growing environmental problem.
The government has proposed that killing camels be officially registered as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Australia has the world’s largest population of wild camels — an estimated 1.2 million — and considers them to be a growing environmental problem.
The proposal, released for public comment this week, would allow sharpshooters to earn so-called carbon credits for slaughtering camels. Industrial polluters around the world could buy the credits to offset their own carbon emissions.
Each camel belches an estimated 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of methane a year, which is equivalent to a metric ton (1.1 U.S. ton) of carbon dioxide in its impact on global warming. That’s roughly one-sixth the amount of CO2 that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says an average car produces annually.
A bill to create a carbon credit regime will go to a vote in the House of Representatives on Wednesday and is expected to become law within weeks.
A government registry will be set up to determine what actions will qualify for carbon credits, and bureaucrats are expected to decide by the end of the year whether killing camels will be among them.
Mark Dreyfus, the government’s parliamentary secretary for climate change, said he hopes the proposal wipes out camels from the Australian wild.
“Potentially it has tremendous merit, because feral camels are a dreadful menace across the whole of arid Australia,” Dreyfus told The Associated Press on Thursday.
First introduced in the 1840s to help explorers and pioneers travel through Australia’s arid interior, camels now cover vast tracts of the continent’s parched and sparsely populated center and west.
Camels compete with sheep and cattle for food, trample vegetation and invade remote settlements in search of water, scaring residents as they tear apart bathrooms and rip up water pipes.
The government estimates camel numbers double every nine years, despite recent government-funded culls and a small export meat trade with the Middle East.
“It’s not well understood because they’re in remote areas of Australia what extraordinary damage this very, very large wild camel population is doing in an economic, environmental and social sense,” Dreyfus said.
Under the new environmental law, Dreyfus said, the camels could be slaughtered for their meat as well as carbon credits — adding to the financial return to those who currently herd and kill camels for human and pet food. Shooters in helicopters could also claim carbon credits if they proved that they had humanely killed a camel and abandoned its carcass.
Garry Dan, a central Australian cattle rancher who also catches camels for their meat, described the added carbon credit value for carcasses as “ideal.”
He said while camels were freely available in the wild, they are expensive to truck to abattoirs because they are too big for standard cattle trailers.
The carbon trading business Northwest Carbon first pitched carbon credits for camels to the government. Its managing director, Tim Moore, said it was too early to place a dollar value on each dead animal.
“Obviously the higher the value, the faster we’re going to be able to eradicate the problem of the feral camel pest in Australia,” Moore said.
Killing camels is one of three proposals currently being considered by the government for carbon credits under the new law. The others would extract methane from landfills and change how Aborigines manage fire in savannah grasslands.
Australia plans to make its worst industrial polluters pay a tax on every ton of carbon gas they produce from July 1, 2012. The government aims to slash Australia’s greenhouse emissions to 5 percent below 2000 levels by 2020.
Source: The Washington Times
January 2013
Camel cull carbon credits fail to get over hum
A plan to cull hundreds of thousands of camels from the deserts of central Australia in exchange for carbon credits has been knocked back by the Federal Government.
It is estimated that there are more than a million feral camels in the Red Centre and surrounds, and each animal emits about a tonne of methane gas each year.
Private company Northwest Carbon wanted to cull and sell the camels in exchange for credits under the Commonwealth's carbon farming initiative.
Managing director Tim Moore says the plan would make camel elimination a sustainable project.
"The carbon farming initiative specifically identifies feral camel management as an activity that should be able to generate carbon credits," he said.
Mr Moore says the rejection of the proposal is a major setback to controlling camel numbers.
"No-one seems to have been able to provide a long-term solution to date," he said.
The Government says Northwest Carbon has not provided enough information about how the reduction of emissions would be assessed.
Source: ABC News
It is estimated that there are more than a million feral camels in the Red Centre and surrounds, and each animal emits about a tonne of methane gas each year.
Private company Northwest Carbon wanted to cull and sell the camels in exchange for credits under the Commonwealth's carbon farming initiative.
Managing director Tim Moore says the plan would make camel elimination a sustainable project.
"The carbon farming initiative specifically identifies feral camel management as an activity that should be able to generate carbon credits," he said.
Mr Moore says the rejection of the proposal is a major setback to controlling camel numbers.
"No-one seems to have been able to provide a long-term solution to date," he said.
The Government says Northwest Carbon has not provided enough information about how the reduction of emissions would be assessed.
Source: ABC News
Camels in the outback
Al Jazeera World goes to South Australia with Qatari businessman Ali Sultan Al Hajri to find a solution to mass killings.
via Al Jazeera World
Al Jazeera World goes to Australia with Ali Sultan Al Hajri, a Qatari who grew up in the desert, illiterate and raising camels until he was 17.
Now a successful, self-made businessman in the country's capital, Doha, Ali still keeps a herd of camels, and knows each one of them by name, face and personality.
Ali travels to Australia with Al Jazeera producers Yasir Khan and Mansour Almansouri, and cameraman Fadi ElBenny, to witness the killings and to meet the people who support the camel cull and those who oppose it.
Al Hajri aims to find out if there is a better way to deal with an animal that he loves, rather than the current Australian government's policy of mass killing.
Al Jazeera World goes to Australia with Ali Sultan Al Hajri, a Qatari who grew up in the desert, illiterate and raising camels until he was 17.
Now a successful, self-made businessman in the country's capital, Doha, Ali still keeps a herd of camels, and knows each one of them by name, face and personality.
Ali travels to Australia with Al Jazeera producers Yasir Khan and Mansour Almansouri, and cameraman Fadi ElBenny, to witness the killings and to meet the people who support the camel cull and those who oppose it.
Al Hajri aims to find out if there is a better way to deal with an animal that he loves, rather than the current Australian government's policy of mass killing.
Sources & references:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1209608/Cull-worlds-wild-herd-camels-begins-Australias-Outback.htmlhttp://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/9/australian-camels-could-be-shot-curb-methane/?page=all
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-16/camel-cull-carbon-credit-plan-fails/4467032
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeraworld/2012/12/20121226115848287535.html
http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0504a/camelshooting.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1209608/Cull-worlds-wild-herd-camels-begins-Australias-Outback.htmlhttp://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/9/australian-camels-could-be-shot-curb-methane/?page=all
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-16/camel-cull-carbon-credit-plan-fails/4467032
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeraworld/2012/12/20121226115848287535.html
http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0504a/camelshooting.html