Nat sez, "Six thousand marauding camels have rampaged though a small Australian outback town. Apparently there are over a million in the outback, doubling their numbers every nine years, and despoiling the ecosystems, water supplies, and Aboriginal resources. Wikipedia knows all. One proposed solution involves an export-licensed, halal-certified abattoir to produce camel meat for export.
Just goes to show that there's no tasty meat source so invasive and pestilential that it doesn't have an industry and lobby group."
Feral camels ruling the roost in Outback (Thanks, Nat!)They have smashed water mains, damaged homes, buildings and the local airstrip - threatening emergency medical evacuations - and scared local residents from venturing outside.
"The community of Docker River is under siege," said the Northern Territory's Local Government Minister, Rob Knight.
"This is a dire situation which requires immediate action
...Central Australian Camel Industry executive officer, Peter Seidel, said camel meat was low in fat and cholesterol and tasted like beef.
"There is substantial demand worldwide (for camel meat). An investor from Oman is already interested," Mr Seidel said.
(Image: Deve (Camel), a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Veyis Polat's Flickr stream)
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"They have smashed water mains, damaged homes, buildings and the local airstrip - threatening emergency medical evacuations - and scared local residents from venturing outside."
And to add insult to injury, spitting the entire time.
WTB a million bullets.
Anyone ever been licked by a camel? Single most disgusting experience of my young life. Their mucus is this viscous, sticky...stuff. Ugh. I get inarticulate with the creepy-crawlies even recalling it.
I spent about 20 minutes wiping it off and smelled like death for about a day afterward. No offense to dead things.
So yeah, terrorist camels? I believe it.
This camelcide has got to be stopped. The camels need a land where they can live decent lives free from slavery and persecution. They didn't cross half the planet to end up on a grill, they came to your shores to taste Freedom! Long live the First Republic of Camelia. Now let's hope that they will treat the local wallabi population with respect.
Hilariously, an American newsreader got a bee in her bonnet about the fact that we cull feral camels here and decided to tell us and our PM what to do. I think she needs someone to explain to her that they aren't native and, while less destructive than animals like horses, can be a menace and humane culling is the only way to deal with them.
http://www.ytb.cm/wtch?v=tzMB3sBXk
As usual, modern technology has the answer... http://www.dillonaero.com/
Well if they aren't native then culling must be the best option. After all Australia is a local island for local people.
This is odd.. We were watching some show about the 'Tiger Island' attraction because it had adorable kittens on it, and I started research on animal infestation in Australia.. I'm sure most people know about the rabbit problem, they breed like rabbits of course and apparently must be killed like roaches.. There are large campaigns about house cat ownership because of fear that feral numbers will spread and diminish bird species, as well as kill the pet canaries.. Is it that Australia is just a really good place for certain mammals to thrive, or did the whole rabbit infestation thing create a precedent for these sentiments? Very coincidental, this post...
doubling their numbers every nine years, and despoiling the ecosystems
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought camels were one of the least damaging of the non-native species because they're desert herbivores and don't trash the ecosystem as badly as say, feral cats and pigs. That's not to say they're not damaging, but there are worse ones out there. Of course, I learned everything I know about the Australian ecosystem from Steve Irwin.
Thank you Pantograph. It always annoys me when people think that some species have more of a right to live just because they were there first. In my unfortunately often backwards country, they think its fine to cut down and replace perfectly good trees because they are not 'native'.
Yes, well unfortunately feral cats don't taste like beef or chicken for that matter so there's no convenient solution.
As for feral pigs, thats bacon with a mean temper and tusks to match, we should probably introduce Tigers to control the population.... and greenies who like to chain themselves to trees >.>
Camel meat is tasty. It's quite common where I'm now living. Very red colour with a nice texture. Doesn't taste gamey -- very much like beef.
I agree with the lobbyists... eat them. Change their status from "invasive" to "tasty" and a liability becomes a resource. Problem solved. Eventually.
I could eat camel without a second thought. I'm pretty much omnivorous, only drawing the line at dogs and cats (warm and fuzzy psychological flaw)... and long pig, of course...
Why draw the line at long pig? I hear that not unlike the grey squirrel in Britain, the pink human is a very invasive species in Australia.
So far no halal kill has been organised. That requires an abattoir. And the local abattoir is closed. However if the Federal Government helps with funding it may open up again. That would mean camels would be rounded up by planes (its a huge area they're in) and put into mobile yards. Trucks would then come in, pick up the camels and take them to the abattoir where MAYBE if an export market can be organised they'd be killed via Halal. Its pretty easy to do Halal in Australia. A lot of sheep abattoirs do it..I've been to them. But camels are just one feral animal happily breeding in Australia(about 1.5 million of them) There's about one million donkeys, hundreds of thousands of buffalo, countless wild pigs (they tend to be black and fairly unfriendly.) Then there's cats and foxes; and finally rabbits we have squillions of them. Oh and we also have a Shooters political party.
...news update, my cat has just caught a rabbit, feral rabbit problem solved, let the feral cats eat them.
And the pigs, donkeys and camels. How big is your cat? Does it have stripes?
I have a fluffy black kitty with a single white stripe running down his back. He smells funny sometimes but other than that is very nice.
they probably are pretty tasty.
the only problem i have is with the halal part, we need to be moving away from that and be using the bolt stun method
I'm sorry. Bit confused. Has Boing Boing just become a recruitment agency for hungry cats wanting job placements in Australia's outback?
I wonder why camels have been so successful there. I know the US army tried introducing camels into the US in the 19th century but it didn't work out. There are still rumours of feral camels in the states though...
We've got around that bit here in Australia. Halal method involves a prayer followed by bolt stun and then the slaughter, very large group slaughter.
I know this might not be an attractive solution, but honestly the best way to handle invasive species like this is to cull them in some manner.
Nobody wants that much camel meat, and the Aussie government knows it.
Selective hunting, sterilization programs and such are the only way to handle these situations. The camels aren't at fault, but then again neither are the kangaroos, and they cull these all the time.
Sorry nanuq. On your question.... We had about 10,000 camels brought out here in the late 1800s up to about 1910. The one humped variety. They helped supply goods for the building of the overland telegraph which connected Adelaide in the south up to Darwin in the north. But even before that in the 1860s there were camel studs. The early settlers looked at the desert and thought: well there's no transport so how are we going to move about and explore the interior of Australia. One of answer was camels. After cars and train came many camels were left to their own devices. And ever since camels have been very happy running about, eating and breeding. Afghanis were also brought out during the late 1800s to help look after the camels. There are old tin mosques spread about Australia's interior.
Can you provide more information on the slaughter method. My understanding was that to halal required no stunning and that they were to be fully conscious when killed.
Two words:
camel jerky
The first article that I read made it sound like they were just going out there with machine guns. My first thought was, "I have a crock-pot and I know how to use it."
Alisong76,
That video had some pretty offensive content unrelated to the camel cull.
Camels, despoiling the outback? We can't allow non-humans to despoil the outback.
Bringing camels to the outback. File under: Seemed like a good idea at the time.
@ skeletoncityrepeater:
The secret to why all these invasive mammals are going gangbusters in Australia is because of the word you left out of the description: placental.
The local marsupials just can't compete with the placental mammals, just like most of the marsupials in North America and South America were wiped out by the placentals when they arrived there (due to ice ages creating ice bridges and/or continental drift).
Outside of a few specialized niches, placental mammals really do have the advantage.
Can't believe I'm first with this, but THROW ONE ON THE BARBIE!
...
WTB INDUSTRIAL SIZE BARBIE
IIRC, Halal slaughter, like kosher slaughter, minimizes the animal's discomfort by deep-cutting a neck artery which brings very swift unconsciousness.
Surely there can be no excuse these days to be "terrorized" by anything large enough to shoot.
Rats and microbes, sure, those guys are little and sneaky; but camels in open ground?
OK here is the Halal kill procedure briefly. The sheep are herded onto a type of conveyor belt, with their legs hanging down (so they can't run away). They are then stunned. The person stunning the sheep doesn't have to be a Moslem. The stunned, unconscious sheep is then moved along by the conveyor belt. A Moslem then cuts part of the sheep's throat while also praying. And so on and so forth.
Most Australian (in fact I think all) mutton export abattoirs have halal kills. And most sheep and lambs are killed this way. That's because it would impossible to separate halal and non halal meat etc. Non-halal meat, offal etc cannot contaminate halal stuff.
There's more trivia on abattoirs at see Bulls testicles and photographs.
This brings us back to camels. Abattoir conveyor systems are relatively easy for sheep. Sheep and lambs have short legs and are pretty small. Well certainly much smaller than camels. So if an abattoir is going to kill camels they'd have to have re-arrange the conveyor system fairly drastically.
Hope that was of some help.
wotwaste,
Your website seems to pop up quite frequently in your comments. Please read the Moderation Policy.
Couldn't we just ship them back to the middle east? Find some terrorist training camps, airlift the camels in and let the camels terrorize some terrorists?
As it happens, I don't think it's that easy to buy handguns and the like in Australia as it is in USA.
If they are going to kill camels for their meat, I believe it would also be wise for them to at least harvest the camel's fiber. I am a spinner (meaning I spin fiber into yarn) and a knitter and I find camel fiber to be a joy to work with. Currently, it is difficult/expensive to find camel fiber for sale in the United States and if they decided to be less wasteful, whatever company could certainly also turn a large profit from selling the fiber.
One of the dudes who coined or popularized the term "Permaculture" was Australian. He has a great anecdote about a woman asking him how to solve her garden slug infestation. He said something like, "You haven't got an excess of slugs. You have a shortage of ducks." (Which will eat the slugs.)
There have been numerous screw-ups where new predators have been introduced to take consume invasive species, and then the predator becomes a new problem. Maybe it won't work that way if humans become the predators and just feed on non-native species. Please pass the kudzu jelly and the zebra mussel stew.
We love killing foreigners here.
We charge them xtra money to study and make their visits here as expensive as possible.
I have a friend and his job is to go out to gardens, farms and bushland and kill the trees that are foreign.
also check out our cane toad problem.
Something along the lines of; we brought sugar cane here to make rum , there was cane bugs in the cane they went crazy so we brought over the cane toads to eat the bugs. The toad weren't really inrterested went crazy and started to eat everything else.
Cane toads are damn ugly too.
Oh dear.
Anonymous have you thought of applying for a job with Tourism Australia - perhaps as a tour guide? Your understanding of the historical movement of exotic flora and fauna (roses, wheat, dogs, cats, sheep, horses, tea, potatoes, garlic, influenza etc etc) between countries for hundred of years is surely wasted on a blog...