Australian Camel Cull Plan Angers Animal Welfare Groups
November 27th, 2009
Animal welfare groups have accused the Australian government of being “trigger happy” over plans to shoot 6,000 camels that invaded an outback town in search of water…
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One of the bigger issues here, is the degradation of the native flora and fauna. The culling of 6000 feral camels will make a mere dent on the population. The main aim of the management plan should be to wipe out or decrease the feral camel population to a manageable number and range in order for the ecology to be sustained in these regions. Sure there are many other ways to manage feral animals, but this is an emergency situation that needs immediate attention.
Two key words here are ‘feral camel’. The camel is not a native animal of Australia. Has anybody considered the native animals and vegetation that are being destroyed in these regions due to rise in feral camel range and popualtion? Feral camels need to give way to our native animals and vegetation. Human intervention is the fastest possible way. Do we want our native species wiped out?
Please consider the other side of the coin. This decision has been a long time coming and has not taken lightly.
Once again the animals-before-people brigade are speaking their minds without knowing all the facts. The facts are these:
1. Camels in Australia have been exported back to Afghanistan for decades to releive animal shortages there.
2. Camels are not native to Australia, and are a declared feral pest due to their overbreeding habits.
3. Camels drink water intended for humans and native fauna, causing massive die-offs in native marsupial populations.
4. Camels in Australia cause immense environmental damage across the full range of their distribution, including damage to native flora, farm fencing, crops, residential gardens, town parks and gardens, and national parks.
5. Camels are breeding at a rate designed to repopulate their range as a defence against the ravages of starvation and drought, and in so doing are simply hastening their own demise.
6. Death by shooting is a far more humane way of dealing with this awful situation than allowing these poor animals to die slowly and painfully from thirst and starvation.
Your readers who are labelling Kevin Rudd and other Australian politicians as serial killers etc should take a moment to undergo a reality check – these actions should be seen as humane and necessary. However in saying this I’m quite sure the bleeding heart brigade and all the other do-gooders out there will nevertheless continue their smear campaign in spite of learning some pertinent facts of the situation. Me personally, I’m heartily sick and tired of listening to people who equate animals with humans, and would readily allow a human to suffer deprivation in order to feed an animal. Mind you, these same windbags will happily order a steak or lamb roast tonight, without a quiver in their consciences. Hypocrisy anyone?
How about a seal cull instead? We have a fur seal colony that has for years devastated local fish stocks through overbreeding, and many are now starving to death, and also starving local penguin populations as a result of eating the penguins pilchard food supply. Dead penguins regularly wash ashore, and thousands of penguin chicks are starving to death in burrows as parent birds fail to return with food. How will you feel when a cull of 10,000 seals is announced?
Sometimes, as ugly as it sounds, culling of over-breeding populations is the most effective and humane method of dealing with a very difficult situation, and has been proven time and again to be the most direct way of saving the lives of core populations.
Take a look at Africa’s wild elephant herds – almost an identical situation as Australia’s wild camels and fur seal problems. Drastic culling measures, in the nick of time, saved elephant populations from themselves, and in some African nations nowadays, their ongoing survival is almost totally dependant on the cash generated from heavily controlled safari hunting, without which these nations would no longer have any remaining wild African elephant herds. Local poaching and ivory smuggling had reduced herds, combined with shootings by frustrated local farmers, to almost unsurvivable levels.
Culling of ‘excess’ elephant stocks has been going on for decades, and their ongoing survival depends on it. The same is true for any wild animal species.
Regrettably, some species arrive at this point through the effects of mankind’s intrusion into their traditional range, and paradoxically it becomes mankinds responsibility to ensure the survival of the species through the culling of the species.
Kevin Rudd is not a serial killer, he’s a conservationist acting to prevent even more deaths of camels through starvation and thirst, a death no-one would wish upon any animal.
These introduced feral camels are destroying the outback and desperately need to be wiped out.
They cause much more devestation to vegetation than the rabbit that was introduced by the English so many years ago.There are anything up to 2 million camels roaming the outback at the moment and are breeding like………?????? Camels!
Wake up to yourself do gooders in distant lands and mind your own business.
Find out the facts first.