Comments on: Voracious Feral Camels Are the New Cane Toads (Which Are the New Rabbits…)

By: Nancy Abeiderrahmane

Nancy Abeiderrahmane — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 07:12:22 +0000

Dear Australians,
Please, please, consider this:
Camels are fantastic animals, much more intelligent than horses, thrifty on the environment, suited to arid climates, with excellent meat and incredibly good and valuable milk. All those gallons of water are only drunk by a camel after weeks without drinking. Camels are better for the environment than cattle.
Australian feral camels are a magnificent resource – to be managed, not destroyed.
If you trash this resource now, future generations will be hopping mad.
Please look at camels with a business eye. With the money earmarked for camel slaughtering, round up at least half the camel population (mainly females), recruit Mauritanians, Kenyans or other camel breeders, for a short time, to tame them and milk them, and create jobs and good food in the outback. Some of the males may have to be culled, but don’t waste the meat and hides. They are valuable.
The carbon argument doesn’t hold up, and 10M$ is nothing compared to the profit that can be made by developing camel husbandry and dairy.
Please.

By: Poor Richard

Poor Richard — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 14:49:23 +0000

Remember when Sarah Palin started her aerial wolf hunting program and people got all upset? http://bit.ly/kMt0XG Now, Australia is trying to do this for camels, and they get away with it in the name of reducing climate change?

By: Hanrahan

Hanrahan — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 11:42:19 +0000

The good old USA is no place for a real cowboy . Your old praire boy doesn’t wanna be fenced in , but we run a comfortable hotel for all comers cause we can’t fence ours in .I mean half the reason we have more long legs than people is because we’ve dug holes in the ground for roads and water supply (nature makes our land flat) They are Lovable but large, esp in the leg and leapin department.

Don’t be too hard on us because it still is a real real wilderness out ere where we can’t compete; Even the native jumpers were adapted to live free of fences before we got here. Come and join us in a real challenge – where the odds are against us mere humans exploiting too much – too easily http://designwithnature.blogspot.com.

By: Mike Licht

Mike Licht — Sun, 22 May 2011 23:49:18 +0000

Fresh camel meat can be mighty good eatin.’

By: Veronique Greenwood

Veronique Greenwood — Fri, 20 May 2011 17:26:47 +0000

@Dave, we blocked Brainetics from commenting–hopefully that’ll help as well.

By: Old Rockin' Dave

Old Rockin' Dave — Fri, 20 May 2011 05:13:05 +0000

@ Torbjörn Larsson: you “live in a nation with gun control, without unnecessary accidental deaths, and much less crime”. And without camels. By the way how does Swedish law view necessary accidental deaths?
Maybe someone could get the camels doing Brainetics. They are probably the only large mammal stupid enough to fall for it, and would get so distracted they would forget to eat. Then the Brainetics spam might stop and the camels would starve to death, fixing two problems at once. Or maybe the camels would eat the Brainetics spammers, thereby earning themselves a pardon.

By: Roger Slocum

Roger Slocum — Thu, 19 May 2011 20:01:15 +0000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_Pigeon

3-5 billion passenger pigeons were quickly hunted to extinction without government funding. Pigeons can fly. Smoking a million 700-1000 lb camels that top at 9 mph terrestrial is a few drunken weekends. Call them “big deer.” Everybody south of the Mason Dixon Line over the age of 12 will be hauling Sweetlips and an ammo box Down Under. ATV rentals will float the Australian economy. Fosters will suck the rivers dry for brewing. Every Aussie hooker will be a millionnaire. It will be like Cuba under Bautista – a good time had by everybody, and especially by Australians.

Russian millionnaires with AKs, especially the modern 1xx series. Putin giddy as a school girl. Yer gonna have bubbas with Stihl chain saws doing echelon hunts, bow hunters, rifled shotguns with copper-clad deer slugs, Hutus with machetes, drug lords with .50 Barretts, folks dusting off their Claymore souvenirs from ‘Nam. It will be heaven on Earth until the last camel is punctuated.

It is raining soup in the Australian Outback. The locals are wearing their soup bowls as rain bonnets. Australia is staring down a Golden Age of low overhead, high profit tourism by folks who take their campers to Cabela’s giant parking lot for a week of shopping. The bottom line? Aussies are whining about all that yellow.

By: positively positive

positively positive — Thu, 19 May 2011 18:23:12 +0000

Even if hunting won’t wipe them out, it would help. Hunting isn’t something I’d care to do, but when the species is abundant & the meat is used, why not? I’m not a vegan or vegetarian, so I’m already causing animals’ deaths. Aren’t you?

By: Monica

Monica — Thu, 19 May 2011 16:10:50 +0000

Sure, “strong unisex birth control” sounds like a great idea, except for…. Has such a thing been devised for ANY species that could be dissolved in their water? Oh, and you need to transport — quickly and cheaply? — a couple hundred gallons of water per animal to wherever they’re heading to get them to drink it. Again, “there are just too many.”

By: annemaccat

annemaccat — Thu, 19 May 2011 15:42:56 +0000

How about setting up watering stations ahead of camel spottings and in this water put in a strong unisex birth control or better yet put in real strong sleeping meds and do onsite neutering of ALL males, young and old.

By: Invasivore

Invasivore — Thu, 19 May 2011 15:05:07 +0000

Eat em! And other invaders as well. Who’s got a good camel recipe for me to try? What’s it taste like?

By: Torbjörn Larsson, OM

Torbjörn Larsson, OM — Thu, 19 May 2011 00:04:37 +0000

@ Roger Slocum:

Trust a person with a political ideology (or a vicious sense of humor) to overlook the text he is supposed to read: “Eradicating the camels totally is impossible …. there are just too many.”

Also, you wouldn’t want to compound one problem (out of control species) with another (out of control weapons). I live in a nation with gun control, without unnecessary accidental deaths, and much less crime (Sweden).

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Wed, 18 May 2011 22:36:06 +0000

Unlike cane toads, camel golf/cricket would be a bit harder…

By: Roger Slocum

Roger Slocum — Wed, 18 May 2011 21:40:28 +0000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia
There’s your problem.

Post an international notice: “Camel Culling! Hunt all you like: no season, no bag limit. $(AUS)100/camel tag.” Australia makes at least $100 million getting rid of the problem. Sarah Palin will be out there outback with her .308 and a backup helicopter. The whole of Georgia will visit, rapturous.

Let the US Marines loose for a week, then clean up 1,000,003 shell casings. To err is human, to forgive, divine. Neither one is Marine Corps policy.