BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Wild camels "mad with thirst" went on a rampage recently in the Western Desert Aboriginal community of Warakurna, damaging toilets, faucets and air conditioners.

    Australia has the world's largest wild camel population -- about 1 million -- and they are now competing with native animals for food and water as the nation struggles in the grip of drought. Camels were first brought to the country in the 18th century to help explorers venture into the dry interior.

    "There were a couple of hundred -- they get big mobs up here," the operator of the Warakurna Roadhouse said on Wednesday.

    "They did a lot of damage searching for water, trampling air conditioning hoses, taps and pipes," she said from the remote roadhouse, about 500 miles west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.

    Australia's worst drought in 100 years is at fault for the recent rampage by camels, but increasing numbers of wild camels have caused serious environmental, economic and cultural damage right across the outback for years.

    "An estimated one million feral camels, whose numbers double every eight years, compete with native animals and livestock, threaten native plants, wreck fences, bores and tanks, and invade Aboriginal sites," said Glenn Edwards, from the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Center.

    Edwards, who works for Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife service, said a national camel management plan should see a combination of methods to reduce camel numbers, from culling to live exports, the center said.

    "Some culling will be unavoidable," Edwards said in a statement ahead of a camel management meeting in Perth on Thursday. "In unpopulated areas, for example in the Simpson Desert, culling will be the only option."

    Most camels are currently exported live to Southeast Asia where they are slaughtered.

    The Centralian Advocate newspaper in Alice Springs this month reported thousands of camels were dying of thirst at Docker River some 370 miles west of Alice Springs, but local Aborigines refuse to cull the thirsty animals.

    "The camels do a lot of damage to the land, and when there's no water, they come into the community and cause damage," Docker River community adviser Chris Moon told the newspaper.

    The camel problem was so bad at the even more remote Warakurna, a community of 140 people, that hunters had been hired to kill 100 camels a week, said the newspaper.

    Warakurna will freeze the meat and transport it to Perth in Western Australia as pet meat, said the newspaper.

    (Agencies)