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More than a million camels, the largest wild herd on Earth, are ravaging a vast region of 3.3 million square kilometres in the heart of Australia.The camel plague is inflicting major damage on fragile desert ecosystems, scarce water supplies, rare plants and animals, Aboriginal cultural resources, remote communities and pastoral enterprises across the inland, according to a report to the Federal and State Governments to be launched in Canberra tomorrow.

The world’s largest feral camel herd is posing a major threat to rare and endangered Australian wildlife.Destruction of desert waterholes and soaks by a feral camel population estimated at more than onemillion over an area of 3.3 million square kilometres is a real and present danger to unique Australianmarsupials, reptiles, birds and other native animals in desert areas, the Managing Director of the DesertKnowledge CRC, Jan Ferguson, said today.

Australian scientists are developing a revolutionary way to monitor changes in biodiversity across vasttracts of the continent using satellites.In research for the Desert Knowledge CRC, Dr Ken Clarke of the University of Adelaide has helpedpioneer a new way to watch over biodiversity in the deserts – where some of the nation’s gravestextinction rates occur – and study what happens to it as the impacts of pests, human activity and climatechange build up.