'Shoot a camel and save the planet' says Australia

The camels plaguing the Australian Outback (The Outback is the vast, remote, arid area of Australia) could be turned into both carbon credits and dog meat, a government official said Thursday. Under a scheme that looks set to pass through the Canberra parliament next week, bounty hunters could earn a carbon credit of 70 Australian dollars (75 U.S. dollars) for each animal shot.

They could be traded both in Australia and abroad to companies that need carbon credits because they are big emitters of pollution.

The ancestors of today’s camels were brought from India as beasts of burden and let loose in the 1900s when motorised vehicles took over their work.

Australia has the world’s largest herd of wild camels and each one belches out the methane equivalent of around 1 ton of carbon dioxide each year.

There are around 1.2 million and their number is doubling every seven years. The increasing numbers of camels and their impact on native vegetation is of concern, and feral camels have become minor agricultural pests.

They compete for food and water not just with farmed animals like cattle and sheep but even with people.

Two years ago a thirst-maddened mob of 6,000 camels besieged Docker River near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, ripping out water pipes and wrenching air-conditioners from walls in their desperation for a drink. Canberra put up the money for them to be shot from helicopters.

Northern Territory government wildlife officer Glenn Edwards warned last year that camels could turn the Outback into a wasteland because each one chomped through 3.5 kilograms of precious vegetation every day.

“It’s a camel paradise,” he said. “They’re not like the Sahara Desert for example but if we let things go unchecked with camels, well, who knows, we might be looking at true deserts at some stage down the track.” The carbon credits scheme was proposed by carbon trading entrepreneur Tim Moore of an Adelaide company, Northwest Carbon.

Australians have a love-hate relationship with camels, classifying them as pests to be eradicated but squeamish about killing them and eating them.