Australian feral camel
By 2008, it was feared that Central Australia's feral camel population had grown to roughly one million animals, and was projected to double every 8 to 10 years.
An AU$19 million culling program was funded in 2009, and by 2013 a total of 160,000 camels were slaughtered, estimating the feral population to have been reduced to around 300,000.
The first suggestion of importing camels into Australia was made in 1822 by Danish-French geographer and journalist Conrad Malte-Brun, whose Universal Geography contains the following: For such an expedition, men of science and courage ought to be selected.
The oxen would traverse the woods and the thickets; the mules would walk securely among rugged rocks and hilly countries; the dromedaries would cross the sandy deserts.
Dogs also should be taken to raise game, and to discover springs of water; and it has even been proposed to take pigs, for the sake of finding out esculent roots in the soil.
They should be provided with a balloon for spying at a distance any serious obstacle to their progress in particular directions, and for extending the range of observations which the eye would take of such level lands as are too wide to allow any heights beyond them to come within the compass of their view.
[4] The Apolline, under Captain William Deane, docked at Port Adelaide in South Australia on 12 October 1840, but all but one of the camels died on the voyage.
[5] The first cameleers arrived on 9 June 1860 at Port Melbourne from Karachi (then known as Kurrachee and then in British India) on the ship the Chinsurah,[8] to participate in the expedition.
By 1890 the camel business was dominated by the mostly Muslim merchants and brokers, commonly referred to as "Afghans" or "Ghans", despite their origin often being British India, as well as Afghanistan and Egypt and Turkey.
[citation needed] Camel studs were set up in 1866, by Sir Thomas Elder and Samuel Stuckey, at Beltana and Umberatana Stations in South Australia.
Some cameleers assisted Aboriginal people by carrying traditional exchange goods, including red ochre or the narcotic plant pituri, along ancient trade routes such as the Birdsville Track.
The cameleers also brought new commodities such as sugar, tea, tobacco, clothing, and metal tools to remote Aboriginal groups.
Aboriginal people incorporated camel hair into their traditional string artefacts, and provided information on desert waters and plant resources.
According to Kramer's biography, as the men travelled through the desert and encountered local people, they handed them boiled sweets, tea, and sugar and played Jesus Loves Me on the gramophone.
For many people, this was their first experience of Christmas and the event picturesquely established "an association between camels, gifts, and Christianity that was not merely symbolic but had material reality.
They learnt camel-handling skills and acquired their own animals, extending their mobility and independence in a rapidly changing frontier society.
[20] Various Australian Aboriginal languages have adopted a word for the camel, including Eastern Arrernte (kamule), Pitjantjatjara (kamula), and Alyawarr (kamwerl).
They may fill lost ecological niches of extinct Australian megafauna, such as Diprotodon and Palorchestes, a theory similar to the concepts of Pleistocene rewilding, and contribute to a decline in wildfires.
[31][32][33] Camels can do significant damage to infrastructure such as taps, pumps, and toilets, as a means to obtain water, particularly in times of severe drought.
[36] The National Feral Camel Action Plan (see below) cited the following economic impacts: "direct control and management costs, damage to infrastructure (fences, yards, grazing lands, water sources), competition with cattle for food and water, cattle escapes due to fencing damage, destruction of bush tucker resources".
[25] The National Feral Camel Action Plan (see below) cited the following social impacts: "damage to culturally significant sites including religious sites, burial sites, ceremonial grounds, water places (e.g. water holes, rockholes, soaks, springs), places of birth, places (including trees) where spirits of dead people are said to dwell and resource points (food, ochre, flints), destruction of bush tucker resources, changes in patterns of exploitation and customary use of country and loss of opportunities to teach younger generations, reduction of people’s enjoyment of natural areas, interference with native animals or hunting of native animals, creation of dangerous driving conditions, cause of general nuisance in residential areas, cause of safety concerns to do with feral camels on airstrips, damage to outstations, damage to community infrastructure, community costs associated with traffic accidents".
[40] It aimed to work with landholders to build their capacity to manage feral camels while reducing impacts at key environmental and cultural sites.
[citation needed] The project faced criticism from some parts of the Australian camel industry, who wanted to see the feral population harvested for meat processing, the pet-meat market, or live export, arguing it would reduce waste and create jobs.
Poor animal condition, high cost of freight, the lack of infrastructure in remote locations, and difficulty in gaining the necessary permissions on Aboriginal land are some of the challenges faced by the camel industry.
[44] As a result of widespread heat, drought and the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season, feral camels were impinging more on human settlements, especially remote Aboriginal communities.
[48] A multi-species abattoir at Caboolture in Queensland run by Meramist regularly processes feral camels, selling meat into Europe, the United States, and Japan.
In 2011, the RSPCA issued a warning, after a study found cases of severe and sometimes fatal liver disease in dogs that had eaten camel meat containing the amino acid indospicine, present within some species of a genus of plants known as Indigofera.
