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Thousands of wild camels have descended upon a small Australian down in a desperate search for water. Drought conditions in their usual habitat are forcing the camels into more populated areas. Anchor Marco Werman tells us more.
MARCO WERMAN: Picture the scene. There you are, minding your own business in a tiny town in northern Australia and suddenly you find yourself under siege from thousands of marauding camels. Welcome to the real life situation that confronts the people of Docker River in Australia’s Northern Territory. Docker River is home to about three hundred fifty humans and now about six thousand camels. Civic leader Graham Taylor says the result has been chaos.
GRAHAM TAYLOR: All of the supplies have been broke and damaged. Sewers underneath the ground are getting trampled and crushed. The airport is actually virtually unusable.
WERMAN: And even beyond Docker River, the camel problem is getting worse, so says Adrienne Francis of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
ADRIENNE FRANCIS: At the moment, the population’s doubling every seven years and we’ve got an estimated population of 1.5 million of these feral camels across northern Australia.
WERMAN: All those camels are looking for something to drink. The drought has made water scarce so the thirsty camels head into populated areas, such as Docker River. But hold on, all this raises kind of an obvious question, what are camels doing in Australia in the first place? Journalist Adrienne Francis has the answer.
FRANCIS: They arrived here actually with the pioneering explorers’ broken wheels in the 1860’s and then the pioneering Afghan cameleers, about 3,000 of them, brought the camels to provide transport through this remote, harsh, arid landscape. They helped lug the overland telegraph polls and also some of the slathers for the railways and since that time, their numbers have just continued to grow and grow. It is extremely remote country so it’s a little bit out of sight, out of mind.
WERMAN: Well, in Docker River at least, camels are neither out of sight, nor out of mind and state government’s spokesman Rob Knight says authorities have authorized a cull of the animals.
ROB KNIGHT: We’ll be pushing them out 15 kilometers and shooting them and letting them decay into the desert.
WERMAN: Animal rights campaigners say using helicopters to round up the camels and shooting them by the thousands is barbaric. Still, Docker River’s human residents say they are determined to get their town back.
The proposed solution of rounding up the camels and shooting them is just disgusting. Though they’re not Australian natives, neither are the members of the country’s dominant human culture that proposes killing them. Despicable.
J D Allinder
Ypsilanti, Michigan, USA
Yes, it is barbaric, but the obvious alternative is to permit these poor animals to slowly and painfully die of dehydration. Wouldn’t that be even more horrific?
Surely someone out there must be able to think of a third, a humane, way to solve or alleviate this immediate problem.
The reality on the ground is much more complex than people seem to think it is. No one, especially the aboriginal population, sees culling as an attractive solution, but you need to see the bigger picture.
For the record I have spent time both on and around camels and I think they are an amazing and misunderstood animal. They went from a few thousand to 1.5 million in less than 100 years and they live up to 30 years. The fact is the delicate ecosystems that exist in Central Australia simple cannot support those kinds of numbers. Camels are a very large animal and I can imagine it would be terrifying to see hundreds if not thousands rampaging through your town.
I spoke with a conservationist who not only loves camels but owns a pair. He told me that culling was a difficult subject, for him and many people, not only because camels are amazing animals but because they played such an important role in the history of the country. At the same time he realized that culling was likely a necessary part of the solution as sadly there was no practical alternative, due to the vastness of the area and nature of the terrain. His sentiments were echoed by almost every camel loving person I met.
As for it being disgusting, despicable or barbaric, every measure possible is taken to ensure the animals do not suffer, and while it isn’t pretty a bullet to the back of the head is not cruel. We do far, far worse to animals we raise for our own consumption.