Being shot or dying of thirst? That’s the question implicit in this AL Monitor article on Turkish criticism of Australia’s management of its camel herds:
Source: Wikipedia
Turkey’s government has been bitterly criticized for a systematic disregard for nature during its more than 17 years in power. Its multi-billion-dollar vanity projects, including Istanbul’s newly opened third airport and controversial plans for the so-called “crazy canal” duplicating the Bosporus, are decried for their horrific environmental costs. So it came as something of a surprise when the spokesman for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Omer Celik, took to Twitter today to air his outrage over Australia’s culling of camels.
Celik lambasted the move in a seven-tweet thread, saying, “We are deeply concerned at news that Australia will be shooting dead as many as 10,000 camels and call upon the Australian government to find a different solution. To kill thousands of camels in the belief that it will restore nature’s equilibrium and preserve water sources is not a humane approach.”
Australian authorities began shooting the beasts on Wednesday in southern Australia, where Aboriginal communities suffering from chronic drought have reported large camel herds rampaging through towns as they seek water. The mass slaughter, which is to last five days, is not directly linked to the country’s deadly bush fires, the authorities said.
To call this a one-off event to be blamed on the drought conditions through which Australia is plunging would be to think that the drought itself is an abnormality. However, whether or not the drought continues, it’s emblematic of the future: changing climate. For the animals, it’s not whether it’s getting better or worse, but just the simple fact that it’s changing, because most species have evolved to a certain level of specialization for the niche which they inhabit; the exceptional flexibility of humans is unusual.
But that doesn’t remove our dependence on the local fauna for food, environmental support, and no doubt factors I’m not thinking of at the moment. If that fauna gets into trouble, it imperils – and perhaps condemns – our style of civilization. Contrast how we treat nature as generally disposable vs the Ahuarco – they may act based on myths of dubious source, but that is a garment for their true connection to nature which acts to preserve the environment on which they’re dependent[1].
I expect that, in the near future, we’ll see more mass losses of life in Nature, especially in those areas in which humanity treats Nature as a bottomless garbage pit. How we deal with that situation should prove interesting, if only in a morbid sort of way. Do we let them die on their own or mow them down proactively when faced with overwhelming climate change?
1 While I did not find any specifics concerning how long the Ahuarco have been around, there were implications that they’re fairly ancient. This would be congruent with social evolution, in which this particular myth had actual survival value, and thus was conserved across the generations.
