How to kill a camel

Australia has a camel problem. 

That’s not a set up to a joke, even if we wish it were. The country is home to the world’s largest feral camel population, with some estimating there are around one million humped houseguests roaming the outback.

Lots of people like camels. They enter them into beauty pageants and races, and there’s camel cameos in cultural staples like Aladdin and The Real Housewives of New York.  

But for the Australian outback, they’re highly destructive, destroying infrastructure, consuming plants needed by wildlife and First Nations communities, eroding sand dunes, and poisoning precious water supplies.

Managing the problem is another issue entirely. The Australian Feral Camel Management Project culled 27,000 camels using helicopters and sniper rifles. Tony Armstrong suggested eating them.

But despite some recent attention, the main challenge is a lack of public pressure to drive political will. The cities that delivered Labor’s landslide have no immediate reason to demand action. The horror of the hump is a world away.

What’s more, culling animals is never an easy sell. YouGov’s charity rankings found the RSPCA in top spot for the fourth consecutive year. We’re a nation of animal lovers, where for many, pest control is a can of Raid.

At its heart, this is a comms problem. People with little direct experience or immediate concern need to be made aware of the issue, and driven to take action. 

In much the same way the 2019-20 bushfires brought climate impacts to inner-cities, perhaps the scourge of invasive species needs to become a reality for more Australians.

From Paddington to Prahan, there’s only one thing for it. Release the camels.