Althouse: Camel massacre.

June 9, 2011

Camel massacre.

For the earth.

ADDED: If you're going to kill all those camels for the environment, why not do the fully conservationist thing and eat them? Anthony Bourdain shows how it's done in Saudi Arabia:

37 comments:

Mark O said...: A nation of innovators? Is this from the Onion?; 6/9/11, 9:19 AM
Fred4Pres said...: I like camels. They have ornery personalities. But I am sure they are wrecking havoc over the outback. Too bad they cannot be captured or eaten (camel is not too bad, it tastes like pot roast)--but Australia has plenty of beef and lamb and the camels are where there are very few people. The cost of capture is prohibitatively expensive.

Australia should figure a way to shoot birth control pills into the cow camels left to keep them from repopulating in large numbers again.; 6/9/11, 9:22 AM
Fred4Pres said...: I have seen camels spit gallons of foamy slobber at each other when to males get to sparring. It is especially fun when there are two tourists on their backs. Good times. Good times.; 6/9/11, 9:23 AM
Trooper York said...: Camels are very smart animals.

In the trip to Morocco in the "Real Housewives of New York" they took a camel ride. One tried to trample Countess Luanne and another tried to bite Jill Zarin.

You gotta love your camels.; 6/9/11, 9:26 AM
The Drill SGT said...: nasty beasties.

Pet food is apparently one of the options.

Beyond their methane production, they are apparently doubling the herd every 9 years and are seriously impacting arid outback vegetation.; 6/9/11, 9:35 AM
Triangle Man said...: They naturally innovated their way into a cane toad plague, but this seems much lower risk. Maybe Madison could hire Aussies to think about the goose problem.; 6/9/11, 9:41 AM
Original Mike said...: ""We're a nation of innovators and we find innovative solutions to our challenges -- this is just a classic example," Northwest Carbon managing director Tim Moore told Australian Associated Press."

I'm sure glad these environs are so super smart that they can manage the planet for us.; 6/9/11, 9:47 AM
MadisonMan said...: Ship the camels here, and let them slip on ice and die.; 6/9/11, 9:54 AM
Wince said...: Why do I get the feeling Anthony Weiner might have an abiding interest in the camel's toes?; 6/9/11, 9:55 AM
traditionalguy said...: NB. It is never really about CO2 and animal farts. The AGW hoax is from start to finish a fantasy story to justify paying out money for a noble cause...but the cause is always really how to make government connected guys wealthy.; 6/9/11, 9:55 AM
Palladian said...: Camels are friends of the earth! They even carpool!; 6/9/11, 10:04 AM
Phil 314 said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/9/11, 10:13 AM
TosaGuy said...: MM....

+1; 6/9/11, 10:27 AM
TosaGuy said...: I suspect if the camel management plan simply stated "kill all the camels" there would uproar and handwringing from the animal rights/enviro folks. However, couching the same thing as "saving the planet ™ " means alot of camels are going to have a really bad day.; 6/9/11, 10:32 AM
Triangle Man said...: Ship the camels here, and let them slip on ice and die.

Wouldn't it be far more practical to just freeze the desert in Australia?; 6/9/11, 10:36 AM
edutcher said...: OK, Jefferson Davis, as one of his many attempts at innovation during his tenure as Secretary of War in the 1850s, imported camels in the belief they would make excellent pack animals for the Army in the newly-acquired Southwest (and providing the plot line for innumerable Westerns thereafter).

So how come we didn't have this problem?

Or was it that Americans, being armed to the teeth, just shot the beasts when they became annoying?; 6/9/11, 10:36 AM
Trooper York said...: The only problem with Camels is that there isn't anyplace you can smoke them anymore.; 6/9/11, 10:46 AM
Superdad said...: I am all for it, but they ought to take hungry people to the outback and tell them they can eat any camel they kill.

I'd do the same with our humane societies/animal shelters here. We have hungry people and extra cats, dogs etc. that we kill because we can't find homes for them. Seems like two problems that could solve each other.; 6/9/11, 10:47 AM
TomHynes said...: Send over Mark Zuckerberg with a knife.; 6/9/11, 10:51 AM
Trooper York said...: The real problem is not with camels but rather with camel toe.; 6/9/11, 10:55 AM
Trooper York said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/9/11, 10:57 AM
Original Mike said...: "We have hungry people and extra cats, dogs etc. that we kill because we can't find homes for them. Seems like two problems that could solve each other."

Now that is what I call "innovative solutions to our challenges".; 6/9/11, 10:57 AM
MadisonMan said...: You do know, camel killers, that the Camels beat the Horses in the race to Hamunaptra in The Mummy? And that Rachel Weisz was riding a camel, not a horse? Doesn't that count for something?; 6/9/11, 10:58 AM
Original Mike said...: @MM - But horses don't fart as much as camels. Sorry, for the good of the planet, the camels gotta go.; 6/9/11, 11:01 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Send over Sarah Palin with a helocopter and a (properly sighted) rifle.; 6/9/11, 11:06 AM
Trooper York said...: We need to save the camels because if you kill them all the horny Muslims will really start going after television reporters.; 6/9/11, 11:07 AM
muddimo said...: Camels...smoke 'em if you you got 'em.; 6/9/11, 11:07 AM
Cedarford said...: edutcher -
So how come we didn't have this problem?

Or was it that Americans, being armed to the teeth, just shot the beasts when they became annoying?
=============
Australians have lots of firearms. They were just using them to cull more annoying lifeforms in the 19th Century, like Aborigines. And Red Roos that competed for beef and mutton forage.
The Camels were way out in the outback bothering nobody. Not worth expensive expeditions to find and kill them..not much use for eating (Aussie Outback vegetation made the meat taste bitter to humans. And not easy to lug back 300 miles to civilization in 100 degree heat by horse wagon for pet food.

Herd has grown too large. Damaging the local environment. It is a real stretch by Green Nazis though to claim after the human-caused Megafauna Extinction that a new round of killing methane-emitting large herbivores is "planet-saving".

Why do Camels prosper? Because the "noble Aborigines" made competing semi-desert lifeforms extinct with hunting and broad use of fire as a hunting tool. (Set massive wildfires, go in and eat any animals that didn't escape the destruction of their ecosystem...move on and look for a new place to burn&harvest); 6/9/11, 11:31 AM
John Burgess said...: Early last year, the Saudis and Aussies were looking at how they could set up a market to move the supply to the demand.

It looks as though they couldn't make it work financially. They Saudis do import lots of camels from Egypt and Sudan. They also import hundreds of thousands of sheep from Oz. I'm not sure what made the camels difficult to market.

I'm not crazy about eating camel. Baby camel is okay, in a beefy sort of way. Older camel meat reeks, though. It's tough and needs to be cooked for hours. It's amusing, though, to see packages of camel meat, all shrink-wrapped, in the meat section of Saudi markets.; 6/9/11, 11:35 AM
Hagar said...: A few years back some swans blew over to the East Coast from England in a storm (humans had nothing to do with it), and the Park Service got all upset and wanted to kill them all because they "did not belong here" and was eating up the seaweeds in the estuaries that some was also the main food for some kind of minnow.; 6/9/11, 11:35 AM
traditionalguy said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/9/11, 12:00 PM
traditionalguy said...: The kudzu got that comment. I was thinking that a transplant of some Georgia Kudzu to the Australian out- back would make the camels disappear. It works on houses and barns around here.; 6/9/11, 12:03 PM
Phil 314 said...: England had this problem many years ago; 6/9/11, 12:23 PM
Synova said...: It is a predicament isn't it?

Shooting any animal... bad!

Shooting any animal from a helicopter... minion of Satan!

Shooting any animal from a helicopter in an effort to correct population imbalances that threaten other animals... evil if you're Sarah Palin!

Shooting, helicopters, balance of nature... in order to save the whole planet from the threat of global warming from camel farts?

Which side does the good environmentalist back now, eh?; 6/9/11, 3:52 PM
Fred4Pres said...: In Sinai, they put loin cloths on them. I am not sure why, I did not look closely if they were bulls or cows. They apparently have explosive diareaha sometimes, so that may be a reason for it.

Camel flu

Here is a hippo with explosive diareaha.; 6/9/11, 4:38 PM
Jose_K said...: Elephants are regularly killed to preserve other especies from extintion. because elphants are like locust. Pines are regularly put on fire to save sequoias, that can resist fire but grow to slow to surpass pines. The infamous fire 5 o6 six years ago began when a controlled fire became uncontrolled.In places were wolves were reintroduced they are killing to much deers but conservationnist in the USA oppose hunting them down. So they are attacking dogs and cats, the wolves, i mean; 6/9/11, 7:57 PM
Jose_K said...: So how come we didn't have this problem?

Or was it that Americans, being armed to the teeth, just shot the beasts when they became annoying?

It was the same with bunnies . There are no depredators in Australia but for dingos; 6/9/11, 8:00 PM