A lot of moving pieces have to smash together in gloriously disastrous fashion to make a delicious story here. I can write about the cutest critters on the planet all day and be filled to bits with joy. Let’s be real though, I yearn for a ridiculous invasive species that landed on a new continent as a result of political douchebaggery and went on to cause ethical and financial fuckery for decades.
You already know this story takes place in Australia.
Today’s Moment of Science… the feral dromedary camel wars.
The long tradition of British Imperialism rarely shied away from trying to make their newly pilfered lands feel a bit more like dear Old Blighty. You can’t just not bring foxes, rabbits, cats, horses, and toxic asshole death toads with you when anointing the place with an authentic “newly conquered” feeling.
So, the fucking camels.
Many species were brought over in the late 1780s from England with First Fleet. They hadn’t really experienced widespread problems with species escaping and mucking about with the local ecology when European colonizers decided “know what we need to cross this desiccated fucker of a continent? Lumpy desert horses.”
In 1860, the first successful delivery of camels made it to Australia. There was a whoopsiedaisy filled attempt to get camels there in the 1840s which, TLDR, resulted in Harry the camel killing his owner, and vice versa.
It wasn’t all that absurd of a decision to bring camels. Domesticated for thousands of years, they’re docile and reliable for transport across the desert. It’s not like the emus were all “hop on, I got you fam.” The camels were fine at first. Unlike other species that had been artificially introduced like bunnies, it’s not like a pair could oh so quickly escape and fuck like, well.
Temporary work visas were issued en masse for cameleers (camel handlers) and for decades they managed camel transports through the desert. They were heavily relied upon in carrying food, mail, and supplies through the country and to some early Australian infrastructure projects. It’s unfortunately of little surprise that the cameleers (referred to as ‘Afghans’ or ‘Ghans’) regularly faced racism from Europeans- stick a giant fucking pin in that.
It’s estimated that 2,000 cameleers shepherded 15,000 camels across Australia in the late 1800s. Then two things happened: technology and racism.
Cars had the advantages of not spitting on people and generally had far fewer fleas. They became more available after the turn of the century. Then, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 provided the cornerstone of the unofficially named ‘White Australia’ policy. I won’t insult your intelligence by spelling out how difficult that purposefully made it for a cameleer to get a visa.
With a severe lack of cameleers, it’s estimated that thousands of camels were just released into the wild to figure out Australia for themselves.
But if ever an invasive species was designed to conquer Australia, it was the mother fucking dromedary camel.
For all the vermicious knids that a hundred millions years of Australia’s evolutionary arms race produced, most of them aren’t big enough to handle even just the camel’s prehensile lips. They can live for about fifty years, and they’re generally fertile for thirty of those years. Living in an environment that’s suited to their needs- which Australia definitely is- their population can easily double every 8-10 years.
A few thousand camels about a century ago steadily grew to a million feral dromedary humpers by 2008.
As with many invasive species, part of the way they affect the ecology is by out-competing native species for food, eating an outsized portion of vegetation. They’ve damaged sites of cultural significance for Aboriginal peoples, caused major fencing damage, and they’ll bust a water trough after they’ve drunk it dry just as an FYI that they were still goddamn thirsty. Also, with a million camels comes millions of camel poops, and that’s been known to muck up watering holes.
There are estimated to be 300,000 camels in Australia now. Which, if you can do math, shit went down.
Having gone the way of the emu and been declared a pest in 2007, there have been some recent culls. As with many of Australia’s more colorful tales of ecological fuckery, it’s largely accepted that the camel is there to stay. Population mitigation techniques including fencing, farming camels (for meat and milk), exporting camels, and of course, shooting them from helicopters.
As you do, Straya.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, warning you now not to look up videos of camel culling.
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Another fun thing about Australian camels. They are fine about eating a plant Indigofera linnaei that gives their meat a chemical that is very poisonous to dogs.