camels.smallThousands of feral camels searching for water have laid siege to an Australian Outback town, trapping terrified residents in their homes and shutting down a local airstrip.

At least 6,000 of the thirsty animals have invaded Docker River in the Northern Territory, smashing their way through homes and destroying water tanks and fire hydrants in their hunt for water – and their numbers are growing by the day.

Local government minister Rob Knight said the situation in the town of 350 people was critical.

“There are health issues. There are camels being trampled, and carcasses,” he said. “They are smashing over water mains and intruding on the airstrip, causing problems with medical evacuations.”

Graham Taylor, who heads the local council, said the animals had started arriving several weeks ago and that now when residents opened their windows “all they see is camels”.

“What seems to be happening is that they are coming into the town looking for water for four or five days,” he said. “They have a drink, and they linger . . . and more and more keep arriving. The numbers are building daily.”

There are estimated to be around one million camels roaming wild in central Australia. The creatures were brought to the continent from the Canary Islands in the 1840s to help explore the Outback and imports continued until the 1920s. But the Northern Territory government has warned that the feral camel population is capable of doubling in size every nine years.

Australia’s federal government has allocated fund for a mass cull of the animals while Taylor said emergency money allocated to Docker River would be used to fund helicopters to herd the camels to a spot 10 miles away from the town where they would be shot.

But animal welfare groups have criticised the plan, saying it will lead to “terror and massive suffering”.

“It’s human action which has led to this problem because people introduced camels to this environment – it’s not the camels’ fault and they shouldn’t pay a fatal price for human failures,” said a PETA spokeswoman.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Mammals, Weird, Wild. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.