Abattage massif de chameaux en Australie

[Animal 0]

Apr. 30, 2005. 01:00 AM

Of camels, seals and perspective


In Australia, it's camels. They were imported to be used as pack animals, and then released into the outback, where they more than just multiplied. According to an Associated Press story, there are roughly 500,000 camels eating their way across the country's grazing land. With no natural predators, the big mammals are making the most of being at the top of their own particular food chain, with camel numbers growing every year.


L'Australie se prépare à abattre des milliers de chameaux qui seront tués à partir d'hélicoptères. Elle veut ainsi tenter de réduire de 11% par année la population de chameaux qui est estimée à un demi million.

So, the Australian government is planning a camel hunt — or, more to the point, a camel cull. Thousands of the animals are to be shot from helicopters in an effort to stop the population growth of approximately 11 per cent per year.

Animal rights groups are outraged, saying that the idea of the hunt is cruel, that too many animals will be injured and not killed right away, and that the cull is nothing more than a "blood bath."

Australia, though, has had its travails with populations of foreign species exploding — rabbits had to be controlled by the introduction of a disease — and the cull is expected to go ahead, despite the protests.

Just imagine if camels were cute.

Which brings us all the way around again to seals.

Off the Northern Peninsula in the last few days, dead seals have been washing ashore. It is the kind of news newsrooms sometimes fear: The first thing most people imagine is that these are seals that were injured during the seal hunt and lost.

That doesn't seem to be the case here, though. These seals, as best as can be determined, appear to have died naturally in mid-March during stormy weather, either by drowning or by being crushed between pans of pack ice.

And that will make for an interesting situation for animal rights groups, many of whom cheered the very same kind of stormy weather for disrupting the seal hunt.

Here's Paul Watson's take on Mother Nature's fury, from his vessel's weblog:

"Nature has done more for the seals this week than any of us mere mortals could ever do. All we can do is cheer her on as we continue to ride the tempest off the coast," he writes in his log.

It will be interesting to see what Watson will say about the thousands of dead seals that washed ashore.

Were their deaths natural or unnatural? We'll have to wait and see.

In Australia, animals like the camel are outstripping the continent's natural species.

So, is culling an out-of-control species helping or harming nature, and is it balancing or unbalancing the natural order?

Perspective really is everything.

This is an edited version of an editorial from the St. John's Telegram