AFP
SYDNEY-Australia’s feral camel population numbers around 300,000, far fewer than the one million generally cited, a new study showed Thursday after a four-year cull removed 160,000. Wild camels have roamed the arid outback since first introduced to the vast country as pack animals to help early settlers in the 19th century.
But populations mushroomed, leading to devastating overgrazing, fouling of water supplies, loss of native wildlife and damage to traditional Aboriginal lands. The Australian Feral Camel Management Project was established in 2009 to study their impact and reduce numbers. It was the first Australian project to manage a pest on such a scale, and in a report Thursday it stressed the need to keep numbers down through a nationally coordinated response. “There is now a real opportunity to maintain the low feral camel densities that have been achieved in the Simpson Desert and Pilbara regions,” said Jan Ferguson, managing director of Ninti One, a non-profit organisation that conducts research and training in remote Australia, which runs the project.