KEY POINTS:
They helped to build the Australian nation and had a cross-continental railway named after their handlers. But now the camel population here is wreaking havoc in the desert and remote communities because a desperate lack of water.
Wild camels, descendants of the beasts that helped early explorers to open up the country's vast arid interior, have rampaged through a settlement in Western Australia, trampling toilets, taps and air conditioners in a frenzied effort to find water.
A severe drought has exacerbated the problems posed by the animals, which cause damage to the environment, agriculture and property. They are "mad with thirst", according to Glenn Edwards, of the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Service.
Mr Edwards will tell a crisis meeting in Perth today that camel numbers need to be slashed, either by culling them or exporting them for meat.
Australia has the world's largest feral camel population: about one million animals, a figure expected to double in the next eight years. "They compete with native animals and livestock, threaten native plants, wreck fences, bores and tanks, and invade Aboriginal sites," Mr Edwards explains.
Camels were imported into Australia from the 1840s, mainly from India and Pakistan. They were used for long-distance exploration, including the ill-fated expedition led by Robert Burke and Williams Wills, who set off from Melbourne in 1859 to cross the continent from south to north. Neither Burke nor Wills returned alive, and neither did any of their 26 camels.
As more of the continent was mapped and settled, camels were used to transport people and goods to cattle stations, Aboriginal missions and remote mining camps. They were employed in the construction of the Overland Telegraph line and a railway across the desert - called the Ghan, after the camels' handlers, who were erroneously known as Afghans.
As cars and trains took over as the main form of transport in the 1920s, most camels were released into the wild. They established free-ranging herds in semi-arid areas, and began to breed. The number originally imported was about 12,000. Nowadays they are a particularly serious pest in Western Australia, where about half of the population roams.
Experts meeting in Perth are aiming to put together a national management plan to limit their numbers. Mr Edwards, who leads a group called the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre, said that land managers were reporting increasing damage by the thirsty creatures.
He said that while the drought, the worst on record, was to blame for the recent havoc, "growing numbers of wild camels have inflicted serious environmental, economic and cultural damage right across the desert for years".
The plan will examine the economic opportunities presented by the camels, including making them into pet food and building up exports. Australia does not have a licensed camel abattoir, but it exports live camels to South-east Asia, where they are slaughtered for meat.
Although not native, the camels have been in Australia so long that they are regarded as part of the landscape of the desert. Mr Edwards said he expected some public opposition to the idea of culling. But "some culling will be unavoidable", he warned.
At Docker River, a community 370 miles west of Alice Springs, thousands of camels have been dying of thirst, according to the Centralian Advocate newspaper.
At even more remote Warakurna, locals have hired shooters to kill up to 100 animals a week, the newspaper reported. They plan to freeze the meat and send it to Perth as pet food.
- INDEPENDENT
