Residents in remote Northern Territory communities are being held hostage in their own homes as feral camels storm their towns in a desperate attempt to find water.<\/p>\n
Eleven homes in the community of Mount Liebig, about 320km west of Alice Springs, have been left without water as the camels rip taps and air-conditioners from the walls of homes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a bloody terrible situation out there,\u201d MacDonnell Regional Council CEO Belinda Urquhart said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s 45C heat out there at Mt Liebig, there\u2019s 11 homes without water, there\u2019s fences down, there\u2019s taps down, there\u2019s air-conditioning down, we\u2019ve got camels that are perishing out on the outskirts now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The camels have crashed through fences and destroyed other infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In some cases camels have died within the community, forcing the council to drag their carcasses out of town.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey come into the community and just because of the sheer size of them they\u2026 knock over fences, they do terrible damage trying to get into the yards of premises and houses and buildings to get to taps and to things like air-conditioning units, where they knock off the sides of buildings and houses to seek that water from them,\u201d Ms Urquhart said.<\/p>\n
She said many residents were too scared to leave their homes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey do want to help them but on the other hand there\u2019s a level of fear and a little bit of trepidation because when you are faced with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of camels coming into your small street or community\u2026 and they can be quite aggressive animals looking for water, people feel confined to their houses, they\u2019re worried about their children\u2019s safety, they\u2019re worried about their animals as well, so it\u2019s a little confronting for all of them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Camels were introduced to Australia in the 1840s to assist with exploration and transportation.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s estimated there are now more than a million camels roaming the desert.<\/p>\n
The numbers have shocked contractors who have seen huge \u201ccamel trains\u201d making their way through the outback.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was over five kilometres long that camel train and between 800 and 1,000 camels all heading in one direction and that was to another community so that was concerning and our staff are doing the best they can on the ground,\u201d Ms Urquhart said.<\/p>\n
Last week the council wrote to the Northern Territory Government and the Central Land Council seeking help to deal with the problem.<\/p>\n
Central Land Council general manager of regional and development services Mischa Cartwright said a joint taskforce had been formed with the NT Government to cull camels around Mt Liebig as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cStaff will support NT Parks and Wildlife to herd the camels from exclusion zones around communities, outstations and roads,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo protect threatened species and country, keep communities safe and look after animal welfare our land management team works with the NT government on the regular culling of camels and horses across priority regions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis work involves close consultation with communities and last year more than 1,400 camels were culled.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Urquhart said the council was grateful for the assistance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s destruction, it\u2019s fearful and all levels of government are now coming together to sort the problem out,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Residents in remote Northern Territory communities are being held hostage in their own homes as feral camels storm…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[144496,111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-247719","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-camels-in-outback","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}