• Where Camels and Brumbies Run Wild
    Awake!—2001 | April 8

    • For sheer weight of numbers, though, it is the brumby’s cousin, the donkey, that has truly run wild. More prolific than the feral horse and distributed over a wider area than the camel, it has become a victim of its own success.

      The Judas Solution

      Like the horse, donkeys were first imported in the late 1700’s to pull loads or plow fields, and they quickly made themselves at home. They were released into the wild en masse during the 1920’s, and their population densities reached 30 times that of natural herds of wild asses.

      Designed for desert life, donkeys, like the camel, inhibit perspiration when dehydrated and survive water loss equal to 30 percent of their body weight. (A loss of 12 to 15 percent would kill many other mammals.) They prefer to dine on lush pasture but are able to thrive on coarse plants that cattle will not touch. By the 1970’s, more than 750,000 donkeys swept across half the continent. This swelling tide became a threat to the ecology and the cattle industry; action had to be taken.

      Systematically culled from 1978 to 1993, over 500,000 donkeys were destroyed in northwestern Australia alone. Currently 300 donkeys are fitted with radio transmitters in what is called the Judas program. Released to join their herd, these donkeys are tracked by helicopter, and their companions are humanely culled. As the Judas donkey befriends another group, these too are located and liquidated.

      “This is a long-term problem,” an agricultural protection officer in Western Australia told Awake! “If small seed populations are left, then within a very short time, donkey numbers will be back to where they were in the 1970’s,” he warned. “People often don’t understand why these animals are culled and left where they fall. But people don’t realize just how inaccessible these areas are. There are no roads out here, and most of the area can be reached only by helicopter. It is human intervention that caused the problem, so we have to try to limit the damage as humanely as possible.”