Then there are all kinds of news about the flooding of Australian carp, sugarcane toad and African crucian carp, but these flooding stories are not as touching as the story of the flooding of Australian wild camels, which has to start with the short film Judas Collar, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Academy Awards!
Judas collar, keeping the story of camel "seed"
Judas collar is a tracking and hunting program organized by the Australian government, aiming at the extinction of the Australian dromedary. The content is not complicated, just making a collar with a positioning system, randomly selecting the target camels from the camel group to wear, and then releasing them into the wild. Because of the group nature of camels, these camels will blend in with the camels.
Then hunters will drive cars or helicopters to track and kill camels, but for camels with collars, they will leave them to find the next camel group and start the next round of hunting!
The camel with the locating collar in the Judas collar can't understand why every time its camel herd is killed, it always survives by itself, but it seems to understand one thing after many times, which brings disaster and killing. Finally, this camel with a collar went to the wilderness alone, and it chose to leave alone!
A very touching story, without a dialogue, makes people cry, but the question is, are Australian camels really worthy of sympathy? Please see below:
How do Australian camels flood?
1839, Colonel George Goller, the second Governor of South Australia, suggested the introduction of camels to support the construction of semi-arid areas in Australia. 1840, the first camel came to Australia from the canary islands. For Australia in desert and semi-desert areas, the advantages of camels are self-evident. They are drought-tolerant, strong, with low requirements for forage and relatively simple reproduction.
However, with the development of Australia and the exploitation of various mineral resources, Australia has changed from a bird-less colony to an oil-rich resource country. The construction of inland transportation network and the introduction of modern means of transportation, such as trains, cars and airplanes, make camels a burden as animal power, because camels don't just need to refuel like cars, they need to be nurtured and cared for.
Therefore, many camels, which mainly provide animal power, have been released into the wild. Unlike other continents, Australia has been isolated in the South Pacific for more than 10 million years, and its ecology has developed independently for a long time. There are no top predators, so camels are in heaven on Australian soil. Therefore, at the beginning of 2000, the number of Australian camels reached more than 1 10,000.
It stands to reason that Australia is so big, what is this million camels?
The Australian mainland covers an area of 7.692 million square kilometers. What are these 6,543.8+100,000 camels? The following are the main distribution of Australian camels, almost all over the Australian mainland.
Camels occupy almost half of the area, but the highest density of camels is still in the central and western regions of Australia. The vegetation in these areas is very fragile. As long as there are two camels per square kilometer, the environment will be degraded. According to Australian ecologists, the appearance of camels has had a serious impact on Simpson Desert and the western desert area of the Central Mountain, Dasha Desert and Tarnum, and it will also destroy the ecology of salt lakes and pollute the rare water sources in desert areas.
In addition, since 2000, the climate in Australia has changed greatly. From August to September every year to the following spring, the climate is dry and mountain fires occur frequently. While central Australia is originally an arid desert area, this camel still has to drink water and eat grass, doesn't it?
Drought in Australia in 2005
As a result, this million camel army began to wander around, looking for drinking water and forage, and frequently broke into residential areas. Camel's sense of smell is very sensitive. It can find livestock drinking points 5 kilometers away along the smell, and even directly attack the toilets in residents' homes, smashing windows, smashing faucets, and even destroying the whole bathroom.
Some residents reported that the outdoor air conditioner was damaged by camels because there was condensed water in the outdoor air conditioner. Camels think they can get more water from these pipes. Since the beginning of 2000, many places in Australia have received reports of camels destroying sanitation and air-conditioning facilities.
2009-20 13 National Wild Camel Control Plan
Australian Wild Camel Management Project (AFCMP) was established in 2009, aiming to control the camel population at an environmentally acceptable level. It is planned to control the number of wild camels from 6.5438+0 million to less than 300,000 in a few years.
The method includes ground and air search. The biggest hunting operation was carried out in the middle of 20 12. Three R44 helicopters and two R22 helicopters flew a total of ***280 hours in 12 days, killing 1 1560 wild camels, and the average hunting cost for each camel was $30.
What are these hunted camels doing?
Let it rot in the desert! This is a local practice in Australia, so it has been strongly criticized by some departments in the Australian camel industry. They hope that wild camels can be exported alive or used for meat processing, or used to make pet feed. After all, this is a high-quality protein that grew on Australian soil. As a result, AFCMP directly killed the matter, and it also directly killed it regardless of burial!
AFCMP predicts that compared with countless rabbits, the relative cost of camel population control is relatively low, only 4 million Australian dollars per year. But after 20 13, the camel population continued to recover because there was no follow-up investment!
20 19-2020 During the Australian fire, wild camels were everywhere in the streets of APY (an aboriginal community in south-central Australia), and they began to destroy buildings and infrastructure, destroy vegetation and even shit in the streets!
Obviously, the control of camel population in Australia is a long-term plan. Hunting is not the way. It is important to find a sustainable development plan. After all, only Australia has camels flooding in the world!