Australia’s Northern Territory: Is Slaughter The Solution, Or Should Man Just Leave?
Did you hear the one about the man who didn’t like his blue pumps? So disgusted was he with the color that he cut off his legs and bled to death.
I know, as a joke it’s either sick or bad or both. However it’s not too bad an analogy for the conclusions the chaps at the Charles Darwin University School for Environmental Research (SER) are reaching.
[Darwin, for those not familiar with Australian geography, is the capital of the Northern Territory in Australia, the harshest region in the country].
- » See also: On the Brink of Extinction: Call to Close Cruel and Inhumane Tiger Farms
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Is Slaughtering Animals Is The Solution?
For over a year, SER has been arguing that a cull of the Northern Territory’s 830,000 feral animals should take place. They even got a spot recently on Australia’s ABC channel.
The environmental justification for this includes wiping out 150,000 wild buffalo and a similar number of camels which, as ruminants, are estimated to produce over 4% of the Northern Territory’s greenhouse gas emissions.
SER envisages aerial missions in helicopters to shoot the feral wildlife. This would require a tenfold increase in funding which, in a typically brash Aussie way, SER says can be recouped from the selling of carbon credits freed by the cull.
Man’s Impact Is The Issue
However, there’s a bit of slight of hand going on here. 4% of the total emissions is a sizeable chunk, but given that the Northern Territory is a major cattle-ranching centre there could be other ways to decrease GHG emissions.
For example, there is no abattoir in the state so any beef consumed there has to be shipped out for slaughter and then shipped back in for butchery and consumption.
Without a trace or irony, one of SER’s leading professors, Stephen Garnett agrees that “the public hasn’t done a lot to change their behaviour when it comes to climate change”.
SER research also shows that people living in the Northern Territory emit twice as much carbon as other Australians and require nearly four times the global average of land to support themselves.
How about doing something to change those figures first, rather than running off and killing a bunch of wild animals?
Or Should Man Just Leave?
Or perhaps .. perhaps people shouldn’t be living in the Northern Territory at all. Afterall, if the climate is so scorching as to require 24hour air conditioning for human habitation, perhaps the best solution is just to pack up and leave?
Sustainability is not just about tweaking our lifestyles, replacing gas with biofuels or the suchlike. It’s about changing our fundamental behaviour to ensure we live in an ecological and environmentally supportive way.
If Man cannot live sustainably in the Northern Territory, then rather than slaughtering a few hundred thousand animals for economic and regulatory reasons, we should just go.
That would be the best solution for everyone.
Picture Credit: SLAF - Sri Lanka Air Force by Rio-X from flickr under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License.
Why is this expensive to do?
Have a job whereby a group of nomads travel on the land going from one hunting area to another, preserving the meat and skins and any other parts of the animal.
If the hunting is so good it should create an income and should not be a cost at all!!!
That’s bloody ridiculous. Las Vegas has a similar climate… probably worse off because of the drought problems. Want to relocate the that entire population too? Didn’t think so.
@Bob, I don’t get it either. I think it’s a question of convenience more than anything else. Sending out assassination squads could take years to clear up 830,000 animals in an area over twice the size of Texas. Helicopter gunships are quicker, “sod the ecology”, to coin a phrase.
@Scott, well I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but why not relocate Las Vegas or anywhere else similar? Why should it be that Man’s comfort (eg. air conditioners etc) comes above ecological concerns?
Chris & Bob - your ignorance is boundless. Yet Chris youare correct. You don’t get it!
Get the facts straight:
1. the image is sigificantly and grossly misleading. The aircraft are SLAF (Sri Lankan Air Force) MI24 Hind attack aircraft. Supplied by Russia. That’s the very biggest country up the top of Europe. Got it?
2. Australia has not nor uses Russian attack aircraft.
The feeble minded attempt to associate the story with killing machines is puerile if not simply stupid.
3. The Northern Territory is not a region it is something akin to what you Americans know as a State, more DC - as in Washington where Barak Obama lives. You’ve heard of him? Statehood was offered to Territorians yet declined for now.
4. The NT is NOT the harshest state nor territory - that comment is just so dumb! The harshest areas are Western Australia covering 33% of the continent and northern South Australia - both states - that qualify for the harshest environment here. Ever heard of The Kumberleys, Odnadatta, Gibson Desert, Nullabor, Pilbara, Marble Bar… no don’t suppose you have. CLUE : it’s not at the Waldorf. You following? Doubt it.
5. YES a camel IS a ruminant but so what, the problem is not camels belching or farting. It is an introduced species - gone wild. It destroys the ground and, voraciously, foliage. Did you actualy seek definition:
FERAL: “having reverted to the wild state, as from domestication: a pack of feral dogs roaming the woods.” Camels have huge feet so destroy a highly sensitive, marginal, delicate ecosystem and being tall eat the best of every plant available. Camels are indiscrimanate.
Camels were introduced by Afghan Camaleers then released to go wild. Buffalo similarly in the early 1800’s.
Your moronic analogy bears no resemblance to what SER proposes or encourages. CULL - not assasinate - (that’s a human-based political act) a sizeable number of the estimated 830,000 FERAL camels plus up to 150,000 FERAL BUFFALO also an introduced species destroying the NT as cloven hooved beasts.
They are NOT proposing to KILL WILDLIFE - that’s what we are trying to save. Nor are they suggesting the are culled for “economic and regulatory reasons”… I’ll say it again - THEY ARE FERAL and DESTROYING the ENVIRONMENT!
The local Aboriginal population does already cull and export buffalo meat of about 8000 head per year. That is a figure which may make possible a viable reopening of the Katherine abattoir.
The reason for the oversized carbon footprint in NT is due to trucking in everything - including meat.
The feral animals need to be culled - abhorrant as it is - to preserve the land, sustain a cattle industry as has been done for over 200 years since settlement, and the original inhabitants.
Those inhabitants have lived there successfully for over 40,000 years WITHOUT CAMELS or BUFFALO which in 50 years are destroying everything. Get it!
We hardly use airconditioners in the NT - that’s an American ethos, and myth. Yes some do in Darwin. So what? In the US 40% of the second largest energy consuming country’s use goes on - air conditioning and heating. That’s hypocrisy.
Bob: what is that patronising suggestion of “nomads” - if you mean our indigenous or aboriginal peoples then you truly are ignorant. They do not “hunt” camels nor eat them or use them for any purpose. Camels are foreign to their culture, like stupid foreigners who don’t know anything about, or appreciate them.
Las Vegas????? Sheeeesh! And they are not squads of assasins in gunships. For decades due to the size of Australia and NT properties, roundups are predominantly done from the air - in h.e.l.i.c.o.p.t.e.r.s.
Chris since when has preserving a pristine, original, sensitive, unique, beautiful ecosystem by culling misplaced feral animals become convenience? Man has and can live sustainably in the NT if ferals are removed.
But I guess it best to probably take your advice of the best solution for everyone. To leave.
So you first - just bugger off back to your IT desk where you can do something useful. Learn about Australia, the issues, effects yte most importantly the people - before you shoot from your very limited information.
Hi Howard,
Thank you very much for your input. It was precisely to stimulate this kind of discussion that I wrote and presented this post in a deliberately polemic way.
I stand by the sources I cite within the article. They include this quote:
“Feral animals, especially buffalo, produce a lot of methane gas and they should be culled” Garnett says. Culling feral buffaloes and camels will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He suggests a feral animal cull in remote parts of the NT be funded by carbon offset credits.
The cull has been proposed specifically to reduce GHG emissions. I wholly agree with you that the feral animals also destroy existing land, but that was not the issue I was seeking to tackle.
Additionally, SER also states:
Did you know that people in the Territory, emit twice as much carbon as the average person across Australia? That’s partly because we have a lot of land and a small amount of people, but it’s also because we have a heaps of fires, and we use use air conditioners and fuel.
According to SER the use of air conditioners is one of the top three reasons the Northern Territory has a carbon footprint twice the size of the Australian average. That is not the same as “we hardly use air conditioners in the NT”.
I fully agree with you that indigenous people have lived in NT for thousands of years without needing modern technology. What I’m asking is that if man needs that technology to give him an acceptable level of comfort .. perhaps he should not be there.
I am not sure if I am missing something here, but authorities in Australia are thinking of slaughtering wild animals to reduce GHG?
If that is the case, that has got to be the most silliest, not to mention horrible option I could have ever heard of. I mean I am not going to insult anyone’s intelligence here, but wild animals are the least of the problem compared to factory farming and human impact in general.
And should the humans leave? I would have to say yes. Today we have taken over parts of the world that are not naturally habitable if it were not for our high GHG emitting technologies. So maybe there is more here to consider on how we should learn to live sustainably instead of killing more of this planet than we already have.
I’m not sure what to say about the headline after reading the post from the NT. If they were erradicating over GHG’s only then I would have to say that is a serious problem.
In all areas around the world, people need to live in harmony with the world and the wildlife that surrounds them. Wildlife habitat, aquatic and otherwise, will ultimately decide if man survives on this planet or doesn’t. Especially with the way man has abused it at every conceivable level.
I cannot fathom the selfishness and greed that I see every day in America, and on the news from around the world. To me an entire solution is fairly simple. Everybody stop being so darn selfish that you can’t see the damage you are leaving behind you.
From trash to food,to fuels, people are selfish and wasteful. Stop supporting throw away containers, stop wasting ANY resource or fuel you find necessary to use! Buy things locally to curb emissions from excessive and many times unnecessary shipping mileage.
If you have the space, get off your butt and grow a garden and can, or hunt for safer meat sources than corporations pump full of chemicals and cram down your throat. Use every portion possible of what you hunt/kill. Be more self reliant, if you have the means to be, and you’ll have less waste, and less impact on the world ecology as a whole.
Stop raising kids who believe that food just grows itself in the cupboard and it’s fine to throw it in a trash can if they don’t want it. Stop buying stupid plastic gadgets for outrageous amounts of money that will only break in a week and be in a landfill, then require that many more resources and GHG’s to remake another one for the next selfish jerk who doesn’t recycle or care what he’s supporting.
Limit the biggest polluters of all, the industrial world, and stop laying all the blame on the average person. No one can tell me that what I have done, and continue to do to conserve, amounts to anything next to one single industrial site in my town! That one site alone makes up for more than just one household worth of greenhouse gases! Look at industry!
There are plenty of greedy people having kid after kid, and at this rate the building will never slow, and the GHG will not either. We will become increasingly dependant on external food sources as we over-populate and over-develop. What filters carbon dioxide? Trees! In my opinion, the biggest loss to clean air, besides industry, is the loss of trees. Nature needs a balance to keep working, keep creating an imbalance and we will continue to have greater natural disaters and GHG’s.
Across the board people simply have to limit themselves in many ways before we destroy this planet to a point of no return. Animals need more habitat than we have left them with in many areas, and if we don’t like it, we need to learn to live with them. To hunt and manage the balances necessary.
It sure wouldn’t hurt to start managing the overindulgent human herd either.
If man needs technology to give him an acceptable level of comfort…perhaps he should not be there. Addressing the line about GHG’s being the only reason to erradicate. In both of those contexts, I agree with you fully. Though that may not be this case,if it were, that line of reasoning would make perfect sense.
Now that I have submitted my opinions, I want to say to Howard. Your anger sounds justified. Yes, invasive species do need erradication wherever possible to protect native lands and continue a balance in the ecological aspect.
I also believe that if an invasive species can be harvested and put to good use in the process, that is should be (not talking about camels). An introduction of a mass hunting allowance is indeed a great idea as Bob suggested if the landscape and surrounding areas permit. Also a considerable source of funds. I myself would be greatful to harvest such an animal.
Though I am not a rancher, nor know much of its policies, I do know that people are also utilizing buffalo as a leaner meat source and raising them similar to standard cattle. They fetch more money here for thier end products, or at least they do here, and as you stated they have been exporting already.
As for the camels, it would be great if they could be shipped back to their prospective native territory. However, I find it highly unlikely that anyone would step up to take on such a task, which would leave the only other alternative; to remove the species. As I am from North America and know virtually nothing of their species, except that they spit.
Just thoughts…
Has Australia considered the flying emissions from this slaughter mission? Was that subtracted from their estimates? One source says 1 cow emits about 4 tones of CO2 per year…
Hmmm All I have to say is that when it comes to knowledge of the outside world, the people of the USA know exactly bugger all…
Howard, it is pointless to try and educate these people that can’t live more than 50kms (30miles for the great unwashed of the USA) from the nearest McDonalds, would have no idea what it is like to travel from town to town in the bush without seeing a vehicle traveling in the opposite direction for hours at a time, that feral animals cause billions of dollars worth of damage to our agricultural industries yearly, nor would they understand that camel and buffalo meat taste like pet food without any of the nutritional content… They fail to understand that there are several sheep stations that are bigger than the entire state of Texas… Should I continue to expose their ignorance?
I don’t think I should.
Cathii