Feral camels hit a hump
Townsville Bulletin, Page: 13. Wednesday, 26 August 2009
Talk about controlling camels in the Northern Territory is mostly just that talk says North Queensland man Harvey Douglas.
Mr Douglas, from Mareeba, has a mobile abattoir which he wants to use to process wild camels into meat. He said the project would launch 400 indigenous jobs in the NT, but that red tape is blocking the way.
There are estimates of as many as one million feral camels running in the NT, but whether or not this figure is accurate is neither here nor there, Mr Douglas said. He said there are still hundreds of thousands’ of camels in the NT and that they need to be culled in the name of environmental management.
Under his proposal camels would be humanely culled and their meat and hides sold for commercial purposes. He said he has access to technology capable of drying two tonnes of meat in an hour in the field. He said this dried meat can be used as flavouring or it can be shipped off to protein-starved countries as food. The Japanese pet food market is also beckoning, Mr Douglas said.
The cream on the cake is the indigenous jobs such an enterprise would offer in Australia’s job-starved dead heart. But, therein lies the Catch-22.
Aboriginal jobs can be created, but Aboriginal communities are blocking his way. The number one obstacle to him getting any traction is new legislation introduced by Federal Minister Jenny Macklin, which requires visitors wanting to access Aboriginal communities to go through the Central Land Council. “We are trying to gain access to Aboriginal lands to prove up viability, but up to 80 per cent of the Territory is Aboriginal land.
The last time I applied to the Central Land Council to get access I was sent a 36 page application document and had to send them a full business plan. I wasn’t offering them a business opportunity, but I could get rid of their camels and create jobs in the process,” he said. And then there is the $19 million Environment Minister Peter Garrett put up to control camels, but ostensibly none of it can be used for commercial purposes’. Mr Douglas is worried that the money will be used to employ helicopter marksmen and that camel carcasses will be left to rot in the desert. He said he has heard second-hand reports of sporting shooters being brought in to kill camels on one Northern Territory property.
He said anecdotal evidence suggested that inexperienced shooters operating from helicopters were taking seven to eight bullets to bring down camels.
Northern Territory Environment Department public servant Glenn Edwards who is in charge of camel management calls the explosion in numbers a crisis’.
“There needs to be massive intervention,” he said.
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