In 2019 Australian authorities decided to kill 10,000 camels with snipers.
As the feral camels threaten the water and food supplies of indigenous communities, authorities decided to kill 10,000 camels in southern Australia.
They were brought there in mid 1800 s as for aid in exploration. As they are the largest and well survived in Australia, they have no natural predators. Due to long droughts take place in southern Australia, large herds of camels migrate to rural villages. They search for food and water, which caused threatening for local drinking water sources. As a result up to 10,000 camels destroyed in accordance with other animal’s welfare. This process called feral animal culling.
What is feral animal culling?
Culling is a reduction of the numbers of animals in a population with aim of reducing their impact.
What are the benefits of culling?
One main benefit of culling is for eradicating a host species, such as a lethal diseases like anthrax. So it prevent the pathogen entering and contaminating new individuals in the population.
Recent studies show that removing some animals from a population created more space and food for those that are left and can disrupt social controls on breeding. As a result of the abundance of the population quickly went up in those areas. Therefore, it is essential that culling programs should have clear goals, a well-coordinated program for target species and place and culling should be evaluated by monitoring continuously. This is very important because the culling process costs millions of dollars. So it should achieve the goals as expected.
