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TODAY'S PAPER

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25832153-601,00.html

Ready to make a killing in $1bn camel market

IN the Simpson, Gibson and Tanami deserts, more than a million camels are roaming wild across three million square kilometres, and their numbers are expected to double with each coming decade.

They are the enemy of conservationists and threaten to overrun several of the nation's most remote Aboriginal communities.

But as plans gather pace for a mass camel cull, there are those who spy a burgeoning commercial opportunity.

"The way I see it, there is a billion dollars in camel meat wandering around the central desert," says Harvey Douglas, who owns a mobile abattoir and wants to kick-start a remote-based industry he says would provide up to 400 jobs a year, mostly to indigenous people.

"The federal government has just spent $600million on an intervention in the Northern Territory, and the only jobs that have been created are public service ones."

Environment Minister Peter Garrett this month committed $19m towards the most significant effort to control camel numbers since the animals were introduced to Australia in the 19th century.

"In a nutshell, we're faced with a crisis at the moment," says Glenn Edwards, the public servant in the Territory's Environment Department in charge of camel management.

"The camel numbers and impacts have crept up on us.

"There needs to be massive intervention and it needs to happen relatively quickly to bring the situation in hand."

Experts say the rising camel population has the potential to wipe out parts of Australia's unique desert ecosystem.

Dr Edwards has set governments an ambitious goal: the camel population must be brought down to one camel for every 10sqkm. "This keeps the damage they do within reasonable limits," he says.

Mr Douglas is one in a long list of entrepreneurs who have dreamed of harnessing feral camels and using them as a resource. A recent report by the Alice Springs-based Desert Knowledge Co-operative Resource Centre -- Dr Edwards was the report's chief author -- provides a list of camel harvesting ventures that have failed.

Camels have existed in large numbers throughout the desert for decades, and yet Australia's camel meat industry is very small. There are many who ask the question: if the potential for a profitable camel meat industry is there, why has no one capitalised from it already?

"Currently there's a real problem in terms of the industry itself in that there's not much happening," Dr Edwards says. "But with all this talk now about the urgency and need to actually address the camel numbers, I guess that has catalysed a lot of people's thinking. People are starting to come out of the woodwork. It would be great to see some camels being used, as long as that fits in with the overall goal of managing the impact of camels."

Mr Douglas says the federal government's $19m package to control camel numbers could be the catalyst for an enterprise creating employment in the desert while contributing to Australia's international aid efforts.

The biggest barrier to kick-starting a camel meat industry is the willingness of Aboriginal organisations such as the Central Land Council to allow access to Aboriginal land, he says.

"The world has a need for low-cost protein," Mr Douglas says. "There's a huge requirement out there. We give Afghanistan $88m a year in aid money; the government has just promised $20m for camel control.

"Let's put the $20m into processing meat, and let's take some of the aid money and put it into buying meat. Problem solved -- you've got your environmental benefit, you're employing people and you've supplied meat for aid programs in Afghanistan.

"And it hasn't cost the Australian government one single cent."

Under current plans for mass aerial culling, camels would be shot and their carcasses left to rot. Kym Schwartzkopff, senior wildlife officer with the NT Environment Department, also works as an aerial shooter and agrees this would be a waste.

But he is not convinced Mr Douglas's plan to harness camels as a resource is feasible. "The only trouble is the ability of the abattoir to keep up with the shooters as they go," he said.

"To actually get vehicles out to where we were shooting would be next to impossible."