Feral Beasts

The Australian Government's Current Feral Camel Management Program.

Surprise, 1,000,000 camels are roaming the Australian desert. They’re the great, great grand-children of imported pack animals that helped build our rural power and rail networks. Set free at the advent of the petrol engine, those animals took to their new home with gusto. For the camel, Australia’s vast tracts of inhospitable wastelands turned out to be a smorgasbord of thistles, weeds and prickly acacias, food that native animals wouldn’t look twice at. Throw in their legendary ability to go for days without water and it’s no wonder they now outnumber koalas by 10 to 1.

Good for the camels right? Wrong. With the exception of white people, introduced species have a big stigma in Australia. Cane toads, European carp and feral pets have killed or out-competed many native animals. As if guilty by association, Australia’s camels are the focus of a large scale eradication project. Thousands are being tracked, shot, and left to rot in the middle of nowhere. Unlike kangaroo culling, camel eradication has barely raised an eyebrow. Even conservation groups seem to accept it as a measure to protect local species. The other way of looking at it however is as a total fucking waste of camel meat.

Paddy McHugh is a leading camel expert and exporter. We called him as he was preparing a load for Kuwait.

Vice: How’s the camel business, Paddy?

Is there anything good about Australian camels in particular?

relatively

This is Paddy gazing at a prize winning beauty competition bull worth $4 million dollars.

Do you eat it?

A Current Affair

The old blind test eh. What else is camel good for?

That much?