News Room Story: My Camel Frequency’s Tingling!

No, that’s not the real title for the story. This is another news room story that my tutor handed to me on my first day since I had no ideas on news stories, but I had to wait another 2 days later to write it due to my source(s) being in the Australian outback doing research.

Once again, the story can be found at eMU News with pictures and ev’rythaaaang.

Camel VHF Tracking

By Camilo Cayazaya

The destruction of the Australian environment is being curbed by WA’s environment department through the innovative VHF collaring of feral Arabian camels.

Introduced from India in the 1840’s, feral camels have become a pest that threatens wildlife, vegetation, and now rural infrastructure.

The early feral camel population was small but quickly grew after they were no longer part of the wholesale market in the 1920’s and 30’s.

Bruce Ward, principal technical officer of the Manjimup Science Division, is coordinator of an upcoming study of the camels to understand their movement, migration patterns and their responses to climate.

“We’ll be doing ongoing research as to what the impacts are,” Mr Ward said. “They’re competing with native species for water and right now they’re starting to damage some of the vegetation species. The vegetation complexes may be at risk.”

The study will involve the VHF collaring of 8 feral camels in WA’s central ranges near Warburton, tracking them through radio signals, then correlating the data with 10 South Australian camels tracked in late 2007.

The effectiveness of the research remains to be seen but Mr Ward was confident about the results to be gained.

“We’ve done work on testing the method and that seems to be holding up ok. There were a couple methods and we tested them to make sure they were comparable and we’re pretty happy [VHF tracking] works.”

Mr Ward says the camels are becoming dangerous because of their high reproduction rate and need to be stopped before they expand into rural areas.

“They are a pest species because their numbers are building up very quickly. There are about a million with expectation they’ll double in the next 8 years.”

“In addition, camels are moving off the desert into pastoral lands and they’re causing damage to infrastructure, power boxes, and wires. They’re moving into mine sites, stopping [environmental] rehabilitation work and becoming road hazards, starting to step out in front of trucks and cars,” Mr Ward said.

But Mr Ward says the threat extends far beyond WA to all the states of Australia due to growing numbers.

“Camel numbers are increasing and they’re starting to spread out. In WA they’re as far out as the Nullarbor and right down to the coast as far as Esperance,” he said. “Then from Esperance to the west of Kalgoorlie, west of Mt. Magnet and up to the southern end of the Kimberley.”

Mr Ward said the study is currently only limited by the department’s money as purchasing and applying the collars is a costly process.

“Basically, it’s an extensive operation so it’s subject to funding availability. It’s going to cost us. Just because the collars are so expensive, the collars are about $4,000 each, so that’s about $40,000 total and about $12,000 to fit them.”

The project will start in July this year and will cost approximately AU $52,000.