Posted on 06/09/2011 6:16:22 AM PDT by rellimpank
Kill a camel, earn cash for cutting greenhouse gases: That offer may be coming soon in Australia, where vast numbers of the nonnative, methane-belching animals have been trampling the Outback for more than a century.
The government has proposed that killing camels be officially registered as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Australia has the world's largest population of wild camels _ an estimated 1.2 million _ and considers them to be a growing environmental problem.
The proposal, released for public comment this week, would allow sharpshooters to earn so-called carbon credits for slaughtering camels. Industrial polluters around the world could buy the credits to offset their own carbon emissions.
(Excerpt) Read more at host.madison.com ...
I’m not sure any carbon credits should be given to those who do not use or properly dispose of the dead carcass. Some of the meat of a dead carcass might be eaten by vultures and such, but mostly its organic matter will decay due to the action of microbes, which will result in the release of a lot of methane. Turning the carcass into “by products” such as cat food and fertilizer, as industrial food processors routinely do nowadays, is much more environmentally sensitive.
-IIRC, they were completely unprotected.
There were outfitters prepared to guide the hunt, etc.,--they are a big, tough animal, requiring at least a .30-'06 class rifle with an elk-type bullet for successful shooting---
insanity
Uh-oh! Are flatulent men next???
I was thinking the same thing, too.
For the “completely useless” trivia file: the fastest camels in the world (used for camel racing, mostly in the Middle East) come from Australia. And, they bring prices comparable to thoroughbred horses.
I mostly agree with you. If you were managing the deer population, or the bear population, the fish or any population that was not privately-owned, you’d want to find the point where ALL the costs were balanced against ALL the benefits. So, the emission of greenhouses gases might be part of it. But, only a small part. Mostly, we like bio-diversity. We view the entire world as a zoo in which we can enjoy not simply seeing various life forms in isolation, but in their habitats, and as parts of bio-systems. This is a little tricky as, for example, we don’t want bears roaming off their reservations onto nearby ranches and towns. But, there’s no big problem with deer roaming a bit. So, how many permits should you issue for hunting camels? Maybe a lot. Indeed, instead of charging people to hunt camel, maybe you should pay them. By adjusting the price, we should be able to maintain or even enhance bio-diversity in the world, which, as you point out, sometimes means culling some populations in order to preserve space for other populations.
Only if oil biotic.
I would use a 30-06 with at least an 180 grain bullet...
though for short range a 45-70 with 405 or 500 grain bullets would work quite nicely....
Not exactly. Bison are a native species to America, while camels are nonnative (to Australia).
We've got our own problems with feral pigs in Texas.
What a backasswards world we live in. Camels shot in Australia to reduce CO2 and lizards (which nobody ever sees) are saved in Texas to prevent drilling for oil.
I was referring to the carbon credit angle. It’s good for the earth.
True that the mechanism would change. But non-biotic “fossil fuels” still cause a net increase in “greenhouse gases.”
What the long term effect of such an increase will be is debatable, but that the increase is occurring is not.
Can you guys even buy a rifle or ammo there any more, in numbers that would even dent the ferrel heards? What about your pigs?
In most natural ecosystems nature takes care of its own. As an example, when the mice and rats over-populate because of excess rain and the resulting vegetation the hawks and owls seem to come out of nowhere to take care of the problem. When the vegetation dries out and the birds miss a few meals, most of them die.
When species that don’t belong are introduced and they have few natural predators they can wreak havoc on an ecosystem. I would kill them all out except for maybe a few in a preserve paid for with private money. They don’t belong there, they couldn’t have gotten there on their own and only human intervention put them there.
So far when humans decide to aid Mother Nature by introducing plant and animal species to unnatural habitats with no controls, it has mostly turned out badly.
Who cares? These hump-backs are not native as others have said. Drop ‘em all. This really is not a big deal with people I have met in Queensland. I went “Roo” hunting with them one evening and shot 8 roo’s. They just cut them up and feed them to their dogs. Camels will go a long way compared to roo meat.
“Cash for humpers.”
Post of the day!
I agree with you that man accelerates the introduction of life forms into isolated habitats, thus putting at risk the species in those places whose cousins elsewhere had already been driven to extinction.
The following is, I think, the critical issue with regard to the environment: Some people argue that we should restore the natural cycle of plague such as yellow fever, and locust swarms. and periodically allow our rivers to the dry out, and allow the buffalo to eat the grass down to the nub. They put nature first. I put man’s enjoyment of nature first. Thus, my point is that we can manage the planet so as to preserve and even enhance bio-versisity.
Camel Meat, Milk, Hides,and Hair are valuable products. Why the rush to wanton slaughter? The decomposing beasts will release a hell of a lot more noxious gases than the live ones do.
Why not just geld a few million of'em, and harvest all the young for a while. (Can be done chemically with hypodermic darts almost as easily as shooting the buggers.) And what about their feral goats? Their feral cats? The Rabbits? Stand-by for another Left Wing Ozzie wank!
hilarious—let’s go shooting
MMMMmmm Camel steaks, taste like manatee’s
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