....because they drink too much water.
Australias rather dim Prime Minister denies climate change and supports fossil fuels. BUT camels give off environmentally polluting gasses. But Prime Minister Halfwit probably thinks its a bit of fun killing more than 10,000 camels and leaving them to rot "until" they can be disposed off -THAT is very unhealthy environmental conditions -the "aboriginal leaders" well supplied with air freshner?
In the 1930s the Australian army deployed machine gun units to kill emus *The Emu War) because "There were too many" -made them a laughing stock but the Aussie trend for this kind of thing continued. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War
The current fires will hide this away in a small news column if that. Australia is known amongst naturalists as "The Red Continent" because of its record in animal treatment.
Feral cats and dogs? Shoot. Poison. Snare. Club. Over run with rabbits -shoot. Poison. Snare. Over run with rats and mice...wait...d'uh...cats and dogs...kill mice and rats and rabbits for food if they are feral.Hmm. Take the predator out of the chain and they prey increase. No brains in Australian management.
Not killed something for a while -camels! aboriginal leaders call camels a pest because they damage fences and air conditioning and water is drunk...not exactly living the traditional lifestyle they demand is preserved.Don't worry -kangaroos next.
Australia while millions of animals die and peoples homes are destroyed you commit another act to go on the Red Ledger.
Hang your heads in shame
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More than 10,000 camels will be shot by professional shooters in helicopters to prevent them from drinking too much water in drought-afflicted South Australia.
The shooters will begin the cull on Wednesday following an order from Aboriginal leaders in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands.
Locals have complained that the animals have been entering communities and wreaking havoc as they look for any available water source, including taps and tanks.
“We have been stuck in stinking hot and uncomfortable conditions, feeling unwell, because the camels are coming in and knocking down fences, getting in around the houses and trying to get to water through air-conditioners,’’ Marita Baker, a board member of the APY executive, told The Australian.
The animals are also being culled over concerns about greenhouse gas emissions, as they emit methane equivalent to one ton of carbon dioxide per year, the paper reported.
A spokesperson for the South Australia Department of Environment and Water said the increasing number of camels had caused several problems in the region.
“This has resulted in significant damage to infrastructure, danger to families and communities, increased grazing pressure across the APY lands and critical animal welfare issues as some camels die of thirst or trample each other to access water,” the spokesperson told news.com.au.
“In some cases, dead animals have contaminated important water sources and cultural sites.”
The operation to control the camel population, estimated to total 1.2 million across the country, is expected to take five days.
Their carcasses will be left to dry off before they are burned or buried, ABC News reported.
Camels were introduced to Australia from India and Afghanistan during the 19th century, and were used for transport and construction.
If culling did not take place, the camel population would double every eight to 10 years.
The operation comes amid estimates that more than a billion animals have died in the wildfires which have been raging across Australia.
Chris Dickman, an ecologist at the University of Sydney, told HuffPost earlier estimates that nearly half a billion creatures had perished were conservative because they did not include animals such as bats, frogs and invertebrates.
Including those, he said it was “without any doubt at all” that the losses exceeded 1 billion, which he also called “a very conservative figure”.
Conservationists and wildlife experts fear the bushfires may have wiped out entire species of animals.
Populations of small marsupials called dunnarts, along with glossy black cockatoos, may have disappeared entirely after fires burned a third of Kangaroo Island, which has been left a “scorched wasteland”.
