Nov062009
An invasive species problem we don’t have: Feral camels!
Filed under General, wildlife by david brooks at 9:57 am
I can’t find anything local this morning, so let’s go just about as far away as possible*: Central Australia, where the feisty Alice Springs News reports that officials are battling a huge problem with feral camels! They were brought in a century ago in an attempt to replicate the camel trains of the Arabian peninsula, but it never really took off. Now, says the paper:
There are more than a million feral camels in Central Australia … yet there are no substantial measures on the ground to contain the pest that’s wreaking havoc on the environment, cattle station infrastructure and communities.
I guess we shouldn’t complain about having too many Canada geese around. And I must confess, I love the sound of the phrase “feral camel”. “Camel train” is pretty cool, too.
* but not quite as far away as possible. Here’s a quiz for GraniteGeek readers: If you went straight down from New Hampshire through the center of the Earth and kept going, where on the planet’s surface would you come out?
November 6th, 2009 at 10:35 am
>Here’s a quiz for GraniteGeek readers: If you went straight down from New Hampshire through the center of the Earth and kept going, where on the planet’s surface would you come out?
Based on a 4-inch diameter Repogle globe,
You would end up in the South Indian Ocean, Offshore of Freemantle, Austrailia, South West of Austrailia's SouthWesternmost land point.
John W
November 6th, 2009 at 11:16 am
We have a winner! Nowhere near China, despite what our moms told us when we were kids.
There's a Web site that maps it to Google, although it prints out weird lat/long of the result:
http://www.antipodr.com