Feral camels now one of Australia’s greatest invasive pests

A three-year study from the Desert Knowledge Co-operative Research Centre has outlined the devastating effects of feral camels on the Australian environment. The report was released on Tusday and can be found here.

The report was also presented to a CSIRO sponsored conference on camels held in Canberra on Wednesday. Over 70 camel experts attended including scientists, farmers and even the owner of the country’s only camel specific abattoir (Territory Camel, situated just outside Alice Springs).

In brief the report outlines:

• That Australia’s feral camel population is now estimated at over one million, set to double by 2017.
• Camel’s do $15 million worth of damage to infrastructure and farming land annually beyond serious damage to ecosystems.
• That wetlands in the NT are serious under threat because large herds are drinking too much water from the waterholes crucial to a wide variety of other native flora and fauna.
• That as climate change intensifies and water dries up  camels are likely to expand to new areas in Australia, including farming land. 

The report recommends among other things:

• The humane aerial culling be expanded.
• The a camel ”market” by supported and associated industries including the camel meat industry be expanded.
• That numbers be decreased by 400 000 in the next ten years.

I wrote a short, if not light, article for The Age which was printed on Wednesday here. However, I strongly recommend the report to get across the entire problem which appears to have intensified in the last decade. 

Camels at NT watering hole PHOTO: R. Bugg

 

WWF claims endangered species funding shortfall

Damage done by feral cats to Brush-Tail Rabbit-Rat PHOTO: M. EVANS

The now endangered brush-tail rabbit-rat (conilurus-penicillatus) PHOTO: MARTIN ARMSTONG

THE WORLD Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is warning Australian revival programs for endangered species are seriously underfunded and a backlog of hundreds of plants and animals are still waiting to be reviewed for endangered status.

WWF Manager of  Threatened Species Katherine Miller, said she was disappointed with the growing number of species stalled on the review list and urged Environment Minister Peter Garrett to better fund the Threatened Species Scientific Committee which process the reviews.

Ms Miller added the bigger problem is a lack of species specific funding in the $2.5 billion Caring For Our Country plan announced by Minister Garrett last month.

The Caring For Our Country plan provides an over-arching policy for funding conservation management projects in Australia from costal care to land management.

“There has been some money for the Tassie Devil, which is great, but there is a serious lack of money available for other specific programs for treatened species,” Ms Miller said.

“We welcome the Caring For Our Country plan, but it contains very little money for species specific programs within it.”

“That means unless a threatened species falls under a wider land project, like addressing fires in the Kimberleys, then it is unlikely to get money for a numbers revival program.”

At the start of the year Minister Garrett called for submissions to a priority assessment list of species, those in the most dire situations, who are currently stalled waiting review for endangered listing.

The priority assessment list was released at the start of October which included 27 species, along with a number of other ecological communities and processes.

The Minister’s office last week indicated 26 of these application had already been processed and the final would be completed by October next year. 

The large backlog of species, which is believed to be over 200, developed under the former-Howard Government because of a sharp increase in  applications a result of an increased awareness of the application process, increase in wildlife groups representing specific species and increased environmental pressures on ecosystems.

In addition Minister Garrett announced last week the brush-tailed rabbit rat, a small native rodent found mainly in northern Queensland, Northern Territory and WA, has been elevated to the endangered species list after review by the Threatened Species Panel.

The numbers of the rabbit-rat, which has a distinctive long tail and is found mainly sheltering in trees and hollow logs, has been critically threatened by feral animals such as cats and destruction of habitats through grazing and fire.

Minister Garrett said the Federal Government was partially tackling the rabbit rat’s decline by approving four new plans to address the threat of invasive pests, especially feral cats which he said costs Australia $1 billion a year (this blog will post more on invasive pests in the coming weeks).

Ms Miller welcomed the Government’s new focus on feral animals, in particular feral cats which she said are are much larger problem than other invasive species.

A full or partial revival program for the rabbit-rat will now be drawn up by the Environment Department as a matter of process, but funding and approval is a matter of ministerial discretion.

It is understood the rabbit-rat recovery program, if approved, will be funded from a mix of grants under the Caring For our Country and State Government budgets for endangered species.

It is also understood a number of other species that didn’t make it onto the priority list are currently being reviewed for endangered listing in the current round of meetings of the Threatened Species Scientific Committee which is expected to report early in the new year.

However, a spokesman for Minister Garrett would not reveal the exact numbers currently awaiting endangered species review and the Department’s website has removed a full listing of animals, plants and ecosystems on the waiting list.

At a Senate hearing on December 10 representatives of the Department of Environment, Heritage and the Arts told the committee the Department had moved away from recovery plans towards broader management issues as outlined in the Caring For Our Country policy.