6,000 camels to be round up and shot in Australian town; plan angers animal welfare groups

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[This is really horrifying; please write to Australia's Prime Minister by Email after you read this; here is his website email contact form:

This is his name:

The Hon Kevin Rudd MP
Prime Minister
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600]

Animal welfare groups have accused the Australian government of being "trigger happy" over plans to shoot 6,000 camels that invaded an outback town in search of water.

The animals have caused chaos in the Northern Territory town of Docker River, smashing water tanks, destroying fences and approaching houses. State officials have described the siege as a "critical situation" and warned that the town did not "have the luxury of time", after the camels blocked the town's airstrip â?? preventing medical evacuations â?? and began to contaminate the water supply.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) and Animals

Australia said the cull would cause "terrible suffering" to the animals.

The drama began when 30 camels approached the town, known as Kaltukatjara to its mostly indigenous population, more than a month ago. More followed looking for water, and soon thousands of the animals â?? which can grow up to 2.1 metres (7ft) tall and weigh 900kg (2,000 pounds) â?? were antagonising locals.

"The community of Docker River is under siege by 6,000 marauding wild camels," the Northern Territory local government minister, Rob Knight, told Northern Territory News. "The herd is increasing day by day."

Camels were first taken to Australia in 1840 from the Canary Islands to help in exploring the vast outback. The population continued to rise until the early 1920s, when motorised vehicles became more widely available.

As the need for them dwindled, most were turned into the bush, where owners expected they would die in the harsh conditions. But numbers have swollen to the extent that the Northern Territory government now estimates that "in excess of 1 million" feral camels are roaming the country.

As well as wreaking havoc in Docker River, camels have been blamed for defoliating shrubs and grazing on food sources traditionally used by Aboriginal Australians. They create a hazard for motorists travelling in the outback.

Macdonnell Shire council, which oversees Docker River, said many residents were unable to leave their homes. "The social and psychological impacts on some people about being contained in homes and not being able to step out " there will be some cost factors for the community there," the chief executive, Graham Taylor, told the Sydney Morning Herald.

The camels have butted water tanks, approached houses and knocked down fencing at the local runway. Knight said the carcasses of camels killed in stampedes at water holes were contaminating the town's water supply. "This is a very critical situation out there, it's very unusual and it needs urgent action," he said.

The state government plans to use helicopters to herd the camels nine miles from the town before shooting them, leaving their carcasses to rot in the desert.

A spokeswoman for Peta said the "trigger-happy response from authorities [was] inexcusable", and stressed alternative measures were available. "There are humane solutions to every problem, and authorities just need to be compassionate enough to employ them," she said.

"There's no question that shooting thousands of wild animals is going to lead to terror and massive suffering. It's human action which has led to this problem because people introduced camels to this environment â?? it's not the camels' fault and they shouldn't pay a fatal price for human failures."

Glenys Oogjes, executive director of the animal welfare group Animals Australia, said the community could organise barriers to keep out the camels. "It's a terrible thing that people react to these events by shooting," she said. "The real concern is the terrible distress and wounding when shot by helicopter ... There will be terrible suffering."

If the cull goes ahead next week, it is unlikely to have much of an impact on the overall camel problem in Australia. The government set aside A$19m (10.5m) in July for a programme to reduce the camel population, with proposals including shooting the animals en masse and using some of the meat for snacks, such as camel burgers. Animal welfare activists have mooted administering birth control drugs.

While the country makes up its mind about what to do with its camels, it should be mindful that the numbers are unlikely to fall of their own accord. The Northern Territory government has warned that the feral camel population is capable of doubling in size every nine years.

Submitter: Stephen Fox

Submitters Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/592985284186083/

Submitters Bio:

Early in the 2016 Primary campaign, I started a Facebook group: Bernie Sanders: Advice and Strategies to Help Him Win! As the primary season advanced, we shifted the focus to advancing Bernie's legislation in the Senate, particularly the most critical one, to protect Oak Flat, sacred to the San Carlos Apaches, in the Tonto National Forest, from John McCain's efforts to privatize this national forest and turn it over to Rio Tinto Mining, an Australian mining company whose record by comparison makes Monsanto look like altar boys, to be developed as North America's largest copper mine. This is monstrous and despicable, and yet only Bernie's Save Oak Flat Act (S2242) stands in the way of this diabolical plan.

We added "2020" to the title.


I am an art gallery owner in Santa Fe since 1980 selling Native American painting and NM landscapes, specializing in modern Native Ledger Art.


I have always been intensely involved in politics, going back to the mid's 1970's, being a volunteer lobbyist in the US Senate for the Secretary General of the United Nations, then a "snowball-in-hell" campaign for US Senate in NM in the late 70's, and for the past 20 years have worked extensively to pressure the FDA to rescind its approval for aspartame, the neurotoxic artificial sweetener metabolized as formaldehyde. This may be becoming a reality to an extent in California, which, under Proposition 65, is considering requiring a mandatory Carcinogen label on all aspartame products, although all bureaucracies seem to stall under any kind of corporate pressure.


Bills to ban aspartame were in the State Senates of New Mexico and Hawaii, but were shut down by corporate lobbyists (particularly Monsanto lobbyists in Hawaii and Coca Cola lobbyists in New Mexico).


For several years, I was the editor of New Mexico Sun News, and my letters to the editor and op/eds in 2016 have appeared in NM, California, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and many international papers, on the subject of consumer protection. Our best issue was 10 days before Obama won in 2008, when we published a special early edition of the paper declaring that Obama Wins! This was the top story on CNN for many hours, way back then....


My highest accomplishments thus far are

1. a plan to create a UN Secretary General's Pandemic Board of Inquiry, a plan that is in the works and might be achieved even before the 75th UN General Assembly in September 2020.


2. Now history until the needs becomes clear to the powers who run the United Nations: a UN Resolution to create a new Undersecretary General for Nutrition and Consumer Protection, strongly supported ten years ago by India and 53 cosponsoring nations, but shut down by the US Mission to the UN in 2008. To read it, google UNITED NATIONS UNDERSECRETARY GENERAL FOR NUTRITION, please.


These are not easy battles, any of them, and they require a great deal of political and journalistic focus. OpEdNews is the perfect place for those who have a lot to say, so much that they exceed the limiting capacities of their local and regional newspapers. Trying to go beyond the regional papers seems to require some kind of "inside" credentials, as if you had to be in a club of corporate-accepted writers, and if not, you are "from somewhere else," a sad state of corporate induced xenophobia that should have no place in America in 2020!

This should be a goal for every author with something current to say: breaking through yet another glass ceiling, and get your say said in editorial pages all over America. Certainly, this was a tool that was essentially ignored in 2016, and cannot be ignored in the big elections of 2020.


In my capacity as Editor of the Santa Fe Sun News, Fox interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev: http://www.prlog.org/10064349-mikhail-gorbachev