ABC Central Australia’s report on feral camel control
ABC Central Australia 17/09/2009 12.52pm
Lorna Perry: It seems the whole world is now interested in Australia’s outback camel problem, spanning from the United States to Wales. Discussions on the airwaves have brought up some interesting, if not downright controversial, ideas on what to do about the feral pest. Professor Tony Peacock from the Invasive Animals CRC says he was amazed by a comment made by the head of Animal Liberation Australia, Mark Pearson. It went something like this.
Tony Peacock: He said this: that there is veterinary science to say that at a certain point of dehydration, suffering does cease and really it’s just a process of death. What he was saying was that it’s better for a camel to die of thirst than to die from a bullet to the head or being culled, which I found interesting and I would certainly disagree with it.
Reporter: The head of Animal Liberation Australia, Mark Pearson.
Mark Pearson: What my point was there - I think it’s being taken quite a lot out of context. I was making a comparison when asked a question, well, if camels were going to be dying from thirst or starvation, isn’t the culling a more humane way of dealing or preventing that. And my argument was no, because the culling is going to be done from a helicopter, shooting from a moving platform. And that type of culling has been banned in New South Wales because of exactly what is going to happen to these animals, and that is that it’s going to be very difficult to cleanly shoot them through the brain or the heart. They’re in flight, they’re terrified because of this hovering helicopter, and it won’t be possible to give proper coup de grace shots.
Reporter: What other methods would you put forward?
Mark Pearson: Well, ones that work, and that is an infertility immunosterility program which would render the animals - most of the animals sterile and then their numbers would slowly come down. Admittedly, it’s not going to kill a million in a two-week or three-week program, whatever they think they can do it in.
Reporter: But the head of the Invasive Animals CRC, Tony Peacock, says fertility control isn’t a viable option.
Tony Peacock: Our cooperative research centre specialise in fertility control, so we’d love the idea that the Government put a bunch of money into the area. But the reality is, it just doesn’t work well enough at the moment and probably never would for the camels, certainly not within the next couple of decades. And the urgency to do something is much greater than that. The trouble with it is they use a vaccine to stop the sperm entering the egg, essentially. That means that instead of being mated once or twice a year, the mare is then cycling throughout a large portion of the year and so she actually gets mated many times. And animals like horses and camels are not designed to, you know, keep cycling and mating. It’s pretty vigorous, and the mares can really get knocked around. They also use a vaccine - an adjuvant to the vaccine. That is the way that they stimulate the immune system. They use a substance called Freund’s complete adjuvant that has micro bacterium tuberculosis in it, the agents of TB. If - as a researcher, I’m not even allowed to use that in Australia in research, let alone out there on wild animals because most ethics committees in Australia regard that substance as too painful to use on animals. So - and then they live for a lot longer if they’re not having babies. So I think, let the level heads have the way here and get on with the job that needs to be done. You know, we have to be sensible about it and not come up with solutions that sound nice but when you scratch the surface even very lightly, they just don’t measure up.
Reporter: Another solution that Animal Liberation has put forward is to fence off the areas of concern to wild camels.
Mark Pearson: If we are going to intelligently look at this program, then they can cable fence off the areas that are supposed to be sensitive or a problem to prevent the camels from entering those areas. If these are the areas - I mean, I haven’t been over there and I haven’t been shown exactly what are the areas of concern, then these can - I mean, the Northern Territory has put - has done quite a lot of work on the type of fencing which prevents camels from being able to enter an area.
Reporter: The head of the Invasive Animals CRC, Tony Peacock, again.
Tony Peacock: Well, you know, come on. This is an area - because I’ve been doing all this international radio, it’s two Alaskas, it’s five Texases, it’s six Frances or it’s 13 UKs in size. People don’t realise.
Lorna Perry: That was Professor Tony Peacock, the CEO of the Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre, speaking with Penelope Bergen.
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