The Future of Camels in India: How to Ensure their Conservation and Well-Being

India’s camels are in a deep crisis. While the global camel population has tripled over the last half century, its numbers in India have shrunk from over one million head to an estimated 200,000 or less currently. This trend continues despite the camel being declared the state animal of Rajasthan and protected by The Rajasthan Camel Act (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration or Export) since 2015.

India has a cultural treasure in its traditional camel breeding community, like the Raika who have a spiritual connection with their camels and believe they were created by God Shiva to take care of camels and ensure their well-being. They treat them as family members and have accumulated a large body of ethnoveterinary knowledge to keep their animals healthy, including vaccination. They manage their camels in herding or free-range systems, allowing them to choose their own diet of trees, shrubs and grasses. Notably, they never separate mothers from their calves, as is commonly done in other dairy systems, and they keep detailed mental records of the ancestry of their herds for up to seven generations, including the creation of several distinct breeds.

According to traditional knowledge, camels forage on 36 different plants – all of them used in Ayurvedic medicine. This may be one of the reasons why their milk is considered valuable as a health tonic and disease treatment. There are many case studies of camel milk having health benefits, although controlled studies are lacking.

Saving India’s camels requires going beyond rescuing individual animals.Instead, it is needed to take a holistic approach and create a supportive and nurturing ecosystem for camels and their guardians with backward linkages to biodiversity-rich grazing areas as well as forward linkages to markets for high-value products.

Camel conservation should be guided by the knowledge and needs of the camel-herding communities. It requires the collaboration among government ministries and departments, as well as the support of philanthropists and the private sector. The National Seminar brought together these different stakeholders to plan a roadmap for the future that will make India’s camel heritage shine.