It has been a day of reading about animal farts. No really, I’m not a 7 year old boy who is just begging to talk about farts….It just seems to be in the animal news this week.
Back in July of 2010 we had the story Australia Looks at Culling Wild Animals to Cut Carbon and it looks like a year later they are still looking to cut greenhouse gasses by killing off animals. I know that Australia has a huge problem with carbon, they have/or want to pass new taxes onto people for what they are calling a carbon tax. Australia has one of the highest carbon levels in the world per capita but, I’m not sure that the animals (non human) are the real problem.
Anyhow, camel scientist are up in arms over the idea that the government want to go out and kill off the wild camels under the guise of “saving the planet”. I have to say that I agree the reason behind the cull sounds more like a way to make money by selling off the animals for meat (and carbon credits). In fact the group that manages the land and animals there sounds a whole lot like the BLM in the USA. A group that twist the facts so they can have their way (and make money doing it). I bet the BLM is kicking itself for not thinking of the carbon reason to round up all the wild horses. Then again the horses are rounded up so they can rent the land out for cattle so the carbon BS wouldn’t have worked.
In the article Wind of change: Aussie ‘farting camels’ cull under attack, it even says that cattle produce far more methane than camels so are they going to be cutting our cattle farms? For all I know maybe cattle farmers there are heavily taxed because of their farting beast.
But wait…no need to cut out cattle farms because there may be a tiny bacteria that lives in the gut of wallabies that can help scientist find a way to cut down on cattle farts. After reading Wallabies key to cutting cattle methane, I think the wallabies should be safe from being culled do to carbon savings (at least they can’t use that as a reason).
Maybe Australia should look at feeding the camels cumin, coriander, clove, turmeric and cinnamon to help cut down on greenhouse gas from farting. That is what the article Methane Gas from Sheep Cut Down with Spices talks about. Using spices to help sheep smell sweeter. Not sure if they ever tried it on any other animals yet. I’m also not sure you could ever get wild camels to eat the spices but…it doesn’t sound any crazier than culling them for the carbon.
While all the above articles are talking about how to cut out animals to “save the earth fro greenhouse gasses”, one scientist in Russia wants to ReIntroducing Herd Animals to Siberia will Slow Global Warming. I haven’t heard anymore bout his idea since publishing the article back in Nov, of 2010 so I am not sure how his theory is working out. I wasn’t even sure if his idea would work when I read the story and I am still not sure.
So what do you think…are animals the reason behind all of the greenhouse gas problems or do humans probably got more to so with it than anything?
Should we be killing off animals or trying to find more fuel efficient ways to cut down our carbon footprint?
Take Bean-O and save the polar bears!