Camel Droppings
Yes really. The eco-extremists just don’t know when enough is enough.
Charles Darwin University has been funded for the year-long study to monitor the impact of the wild camel herd on the carbon cycle.
It is estimated that more than one million camels are roaming the country’s arid regions.
The study will monitor carbon emissions and sequestration, in particular, looking at camel flatulence and the greenhouse gas effect created by decomposing carcasses.
These wild camels are actually wild; the clue being in the name. Therefore this one clearly can’t be pinned on us humans. Mother Nature needs to ‘fess up here…guilty as charged.
But because some people have convinced themselves that naturally occurring gasses are going to kill us all, the results of this study could mean the camels have to be culled because they fart. You’d also have to cull antelope obviously. But then it’d be cruel and against Crocodile Rights to let them starve without prey to eat so they’d all have to be shot too.
TheEye would be quite happy for a similar study into giant pandas though. If they didn’t look cute from a distance they would have bitten the Big One decades ago rather than all being gay in zoos and forcing us to be nice to the Chinese. Horrible creatures.
Although they’re wild the ecomongs do have a kind of excuse for blaming mankind because camels are of course an invasive species introduced by man only 150 or so years ago. Specifically, they were brought in as beasts of burden and as well as the odd escapee some when no longer needed were turned loose into the Outback in the expectation that they wouldn’t survive. Predictably they did and they continue to do so at the expense of indigenous species that are struggling to compete with these numbers of a larger animal than has existed here for many thousands of years. So the ecomongs do kind of have a point, though ironically they’re counted as a natural source of CO2 emissions under Kyoto and so there’s little incentive for the government to do anything. Killing every last one of them would gain Australia not a single cent’s worth of carbon credits, though it would destroy the last wild dromedary populations in the world since there are none left in their original habitats. The horns of a nice eco-dilemma, eh?
“Horrible creatures.” – What, the camels, or the Chinese?
@ AE – am I right in thinking that they are bred in ‘Oz to sell back to the Arabs?
Pandas actually. Did you know they have two methods of killing off their rivals….by chewing off their paws so they can’t move and pushing them off cliffs. No wonder they won’t breed. Riddled with disease too.
Turn ’em into rugs and have done with it.
I take the point but it’s the name of the Uni which gives these students a clue as to why they could survive. Evolution and survival of the fittest. Mother Nature can’t be bound in aspic.
It was importation of exotic pets which now gives us pumas stalking Exmoor. Perhaps given time, camels would have made their own way to Northern Territory…I have a great mental image now of camel seeds being borne there on the feet of migrating penguins.
microdave, sort of. We’re certainly selling camels back to the Arabs for camel racing but I don’t know if anyone’s breeding them so much as just going into the Outback and helping themselves to some camels. I hear it involves constructing a giant funnel out of curtain material (apparently the daft animals won’t go where they can’t see and treat fabric the same as a brick wall) leading into a big enclosure, and then rounding up the camels with off road bikes and quads and a low flying helicopter or two. Frankly it sounds fucking awesome.
ASE, yeah, we shouldn’t get too hung up on saving a species that has evolved itself into a dead end. It’s like the occasional teariness about the Stephen’s Island wren, the last few remnants of which were killed by the island’s lighthouse keeper’s cat. What nobody seems to ask is whether a small, flightless bird that was confined to a single island of less than a square mile was already doomed before the cat arrived.
Bottom line, if you round up to the next whole number 100% of all species are extinct. When it’s the time of Homo sapiens either to die out or become something that is no longer H. sapiens I guarantee the rest of the planet will not lift a finger or any other kind of appendage.
Wow! I wanna be a Camel Wrangler when I grow up, dad!
It’s capitalism on steroids. Wild camels, giant curtains, quad bikes and helicopters. If jobs came with big hairy balls the size of grapefruit, this would be that job.
I got the impression they didn’t want to call it Darwin University, even though it mainly is in Darwin, because it has other campuses in the Territory and the folks in Alice Springs might get the hump (see what I did there) if the sign by the car park said Darwin University.
Still, they’re not so much looking at how the camels survived and at what expense to native fauna – which would be my kind of environmentalism, incidentally – but the usual ‘OMG – CO2’ bollocks. My own research, laboriously undertaken over a couple of cups of tea and a biscuit, predicts that the result of the study will be that the world will be warblely gloamed by rotting carcasses if they’re killed, which would be wrong anyway because they’re the last wild dromedaries, but that warble gloaming is happening because the camels fart too much. The conclusion will be either that the federal government needs to spend billions of dollars on getting the camels to take anti-flatulence medication or that more research is needed.
Incidentally, I love the idea of camel seeds and migrating penguins. If anyone is stupid enough to let me and Mrs Exile babysit their kids I’m going to tell them that one. It reminds me of a series of adverts Bigpond Internet used to run here, such as this and this. I sometimes think children were put on this planet to be stiched up by adults.
🙂
“…rather than all being gay…”
I do believe you’ve just stumbled on the reason why baby pandas aren’t that common.
So why doesn’t Oz capture some Bengali boys and train them to be camel jockeys as they do in Bahrain? Think of the gambling opportunities :-$ .
“And a low flying helicopter or two. Frankly it sounds fucking awesome.”
From the films I’ve seen the pilots must have a death wish. They spend virtually the entire time operating at very low level and at low speeds – the classic “Avoid” scenario for a single engined chopper.
And I clearly wasn’t paying attention earlier with my “Horrible creatures.” – What, the camels, or the Chinese? comment….
Good plan! There could be a fortune for the taking if someone gave that a go. Especially if the Asian gambling market took an interest – its the right timezone and that’s where the money is.
They do have some camel racing here but since Aussies will bet on coin tosses gambling opportunities are everywhere anyway. 🙂