World Camel Day is officially celebrated on 22nd June at the national and international level to raise awareness about the importance of camels that survive in desert and mountain areas where the environment is harsh and hot. The reason to choose 22nd June was due to weather conditions that represent camel’s habitat climatic condition. Camels provide a lot of services including recreation (tourism, racing, and festival), production (milk, meat, wool, and skin), transportation (riding, carting, and pack carrying), and agriculture work (plowing, weeding, water extraction). Millions of people get benefits and enjoy these services, especially poor people who earn by using the services of the camel.

According to the Economic Survey of Pakistan, the estimated population of camels in 2020-2021 was 1.1 million.  Economic Survey of Pakistan reported that in past years from 2011-2012 the population of the camel was 1 million and from now 2013 to onward past trends showed that there has been no increase in the number population of camels that about 1.1 million. Pakistan is included among the top 10 countries where a large number of camels are present.

Camel is a versatile species that has a lot of potentials to provide benefits to people that are discussed above. Camel is important in a term that easily survives in a harsh climate that is a positive point that has high capability to easily cope up and adapt to current global climate scenario and also play an important role in the food chain. In every way, the camel has many important that deserve to invest more in these animals and take care of their health. But unfortunately in Pakistan, these species continue overlooked at the provincial and national levels. There is no policy about camels at the government level. In Baluchistan province, where the camel population is larger than in other provinces, in the last decade, the Baluchistan government had taken initiative and collaborated with the Livestock and Dairy Development Department (L&DDD) lunched a camel project and a recent initiative was inaugurate camel milk collection and pasteurization plant.

Creation of camel health center, organized marketing, application of innovative breeding technique, extraordinary incentive or hardship payment and cooperated research, etc. measures are used to deal with increasing food demand. There is a dire need of time to focus on native camel species and increase awareness about the importance of the camel and the camel is itself a beauty of Pakistani culture that needs to preserve.

Keywords: Camel, World Camel Day, Camel Ride

About the Author: Urooj Fatima has done graduation in Environmental Science. And now she is involved in writing green blogs about environment, climate, and sustainable development.