How climate change is turning camels into the new cows

NTEPES, Kenya

The camels had thump-thumped for seven days across northern Kenya, ushered by police reservists, winding at last toward their destination: less a village than a dusty clearing in the scrub, a place where something big was happening. People had walked for miles to be there. Soon the governor pulled up in his SUV. Women danced, and an emcee raised his hands to the sky. When the crowd gathered around an enclosure holding the camels, one man said he was looking at “the future.”

The camels had arrived to replace the cows.

Samburu County’s governor says that the climate patterns have become “abnormal.” The reduction in rainfall is so obvious, he said, that anybody can see it. “You don’t need science machines here to measure that.”

Cows, here and across much of Africa, have been the most important animal for eons — the foundation of economies, diets, traditions.

But now grazable land is shrinking. Water sources are drying up. A three-year drought in the Horn of Africa that ended last year killed 80 percent of the cows in this part of Kenya and shattered the livelihoods of so many people.

In this region with the thinnest of margins, millions are being forced to adapt to climate change — including those who were now drawing numbers from a hat, each corresponding to one of the 77 camels that had just arrived in Samburu County.

“Your number?” a village chief, James Lelemusi, asked the first person to draw.

The regional government had purchased the camels from traders near the border with Somalia, at $600 per head. So far 4,000 camels, as part of that program, have been distributed across the lowlands of the county, speeding up a shift that had already been happening for decades across several other cattle-dependent parts of Africa. A handful of communities, particularly in Kenya and Ethiopia, are in various stages of the transition, according to academic studies.

The global camel population has doubled over the last 20 years, something the U.N. agency for agriculture and investment attributes partly to the animal’s suitability amid climate change. In times of hardship, camels produce more milk than cows.

Many cite an adage: The cow is the first animal to die in a drought; the camel is the last.

“If there was no climate change, we would not even bother to buy these camels,” said Jonathan Lati Lelelit, the governor of Samburu, a county about 240 miles north of Nairobi. “We have so many other things to do with the little money we have. But we have no option.”

Authorities had selected the recipients, those crowding around the camels, on the condition that they use the animal for milk, not meat. They were also those judged by local officials to be the most in need. They had stories of near-total cattle losses, of walking miles to find water, of violent run-ins with a neighboring tribe as they strayed farther from their territory in search of grazing space for their faltering livestock.

Still, many said the plight of one person stood out: Dishon Leleina.

Leleina, 42, had been wealthy by the standards of this region before the drought. He had two wives and 10 kids, and had been surrounded by an abundance of cows for nearly as long as he could remember. He even sacrificed bulls — with a stab to the back of the head — on each of his wedding days.

But when one rainy season failed, then another, then another, his stock of 150 cows plummeted over several years as never before. A few dozen were raided by the bordering Pokot tribe. And more than a hundred withered away — going skinny in the midsection, swelling in other areas. Some would go to sleep at night and never wake up. Some would arrive at last at a water source, drink lustily and collapse to their death. Several times, including after losing his best milking cow, Leleina roared at the sky in fury. By the time the rains resumed last year, he had seven cows left.

“I had one status” before the drought, he said. “And now I have another.”

How climate change is turning camels into the new cows

People walked for hours to attend the camel distribution, some putting on their best clothing.

What hadn’t changed was his daily routine; he moved in step with his livestock, often walking miles per day. But now he had cut back to one meal per day — as did many other pastoralists. He lost weight. Several times, he fainted. Even on the day of the camel distribution, as the event stretched into late afternoon, almost nobody was seen eating or drinking.

As the number drawing began, Leleina pressed into the crowd. An organizer with a sheet of paper recorded who would take which camel home. Some of the camels were big, some small, some muscular, many slender, and as soon as people pulled numbers — 73, 6, 27 — they darted off to find their animal in the crowd.

Then it was Leleina’s turn. He reached into the hat.

“Number 17,” he said.

Camel recipients, including Leleina (center, in green), crowd around a checklist keeping track of the animals and their new owners.

He walked toward the camels, scrap of paper in hand, and tried to use his wooden staff to poke a few of the animals, which were bunched together, obscuring the numbers painted at the base of their necks. Leleina squinted into the sun. He went in another direction. He prodded a few more animals. And then he found her: a skinny camel with a medium build, a rich tuft of longer fur on its hump.

He gave her a pat.

It would be dark soon, and Leleina still needed to guide his new camel home — several miles through the powdery dirt and shrub land. But even in this harsh place, Camel 17 could manage to find a snack.

She darted over to an acacia tree, pulling flowers into her mouth, working her tongue around two-inch thorns.

An animal built for drought

The camel is sometimes described as an animal designed by committee, what with its hodgepodge of features —

But among mammals, the camel is almost singularly equipped to handle extremes.

Camels can go two weeks without water, as opposed to a day or two for a cow. They can lose 30 percent of their body weight and survive, one of the highest thresholds for any large animal. Their body temperatures fluctuate in sync with daily climate patterns. When they pee, their urine trickles down their legs, keeping them cool. When they lie down, their leathery knees fold into pedestals that work to prop much of their undersides just above the ground, allowing cooling air to pass through.

One recently published paper, perhaps straying from science to reverence, called them a “miracle species.”

“They’re unparalleled in terms of domestic animals.” Piers Simpkin, the Nairobi-based global livestock adviser for Mercy Corps

Milk is one of the biggest nutrition sources for people in Samburu. With camels, the hope is that people can still have milk during droughts.

And yet in much of Africa — for much of human history — their attributes haven’t been needed. For centuries, they’ve resided primarily in the driest outer ring of the continent, while cows — outnumbering camels in Africa 10 to 1 — reigned in the lush river plains, in the highlands. Kenya, where the landscape can turn from green to reddish and back in an hour’s drive, has long been a middle ground: a place where some tribes use camels and more use cows, with identities forming around that choice. Because of that, neighboring tribes see the consequences of using one animal vs. the other. That has seemingly transformed Samburu County — an area the size of New Jersey that is home to the Samburu tribe — into an experiment on how livestock fare, and how humans respond, in a warming climate.

The experiment started about a half-century ago, according to Louise Sperling, a scholar who conducted fieldwork in Samburu in the 1980s. The Samburu were among the most “specialized and successful” cattle-keepers in East Africa, she wrote in one account, but they were increasingly mixing with and marrying members of a nearby tribe, the Rendille — camel-keepers.

Over the subsequent decades, they also noticed changes in traditional weather patterns. Fewer rainy seasons. Less predictability. And most importantly: more frequent droughts.

Uptake was gradual. Cows still overwhelmingly outnumbered camels. And cows still defined the Samburu identity, used in celebrations or as dowries.

But then came the longest series of failed rainy seasons on record in the Horn of Africa.

The drought started in 2020 and held its grip for three years. An international team of scientists said a drought of this severity had been 100 times more likely because of climate change. In Samburu, the smell of rotting cattle carcasses spread across this county of roughly 310,000 people. Malnutrition spiked, including among children and the elderly. The Kenyan government and the World Food Program had to step in with aid.

And yet the level of need wasn’t equal.

Noompon Lenkamaldanyani, a single mother of four, lost 18 of her 20 cows and fell short on milk, but she noticed her camel-owning neighbors were willing to step in and offer help.

One county official calls cows a cultural “treasure.” But they are becoming rarer in the county’s lowlands.

Lekojde Loidongo said he and his family “didn’t suffer much,” as all 22 of their camels continued to produce milk.

Even Leleina, the new owner of Camel 17, said he noticed how the animals fared differently. He’d owned three camels before the drought hit. They all survived.

If he had any regrets, it was that he hadn’t moved earlier. His father, who died in 2021, had been an early adopter of camels.

“In the future,” Leleina said, echoing a conclusion shared by others, “I foresee having more camels than cows.”

Because of these realizations, there has been very little backlash to the government’s camel program, which started eight years ago. Some are also obtaining their own camels by trading cattle at markets. Pastoralists — people who move with their livestock herds — are often described as among the most vulnerable people in the world to climate change, and their fortunes can swing based on the decisions they make about which animals to keep.

A 2022 research paper published in Nature Food, analyzing a huge belt of land across northern sub-Saharan Africa, noted increased heat stress and reduced water availability in some areas and said milk production would benefit from a higher proportion of camels, as well as goats, which are also more climate-resilient than cows. Camel milk is a comparable substitute for cow’s milk. It tends to be lower in fat and higher in certain minerals, said Anne Mottet, the lead livestock specialist at the International Fund for Agricultural Development. Many say it has a saltier taste.

“We’re just following the trends of the drought,” said Lepason Lenanguram, another camel recipient in Samburu. “People want camels now. The culture is changing.”

The Samburu governor said he believes “totally” that shifting to the camel is the right move. He noted that Samburu — with large swaths far removed from the electrical grid and without running water — had contributed relatively little to global greenhouse gas emissions. By far the greatest source of emissions in rural areas like Samburu is methane, a byproduct of the cow’s complex digestive process. Camels emit far less methane.

The program gives away only one camel per person. But it can still build up peace of mind, said the director of the governor’s press service, Jeff Lekupe, who was on-site when the camels were distributed. With even one camel, a family has better chances of having milk during a drought. And then there is a “ripple effect,” he said. The camel gives birth. The population grows.

“So that next time,” he said, “the need for the WFP will be minimal.”

Getting acclimated to Camel 17

For Leleina, Camel 17 — a female — symbolized the start of a rebuild, but it didn’t begin well. Arriving at her new home — a circular property, ringed by branches and thorns, a mile from the closest unpaved road — the animal quickly started tussling with one of the three other camels. They bit one another. They made noises. They locked necks, and they only stopped when Leleina roped the legs of the other camel as a way to keep her from moving.

That night, Leleina put a mat on the floor outside his hut and felt too nervous to go to sleep. He’d heard stories about other camels darting off — something that almost never happened with a cow — or feeling uneasy in new surroundings; a neighbor’s camel had escaped and been mauled by a lion. So Leleina trained his eyes on Camel 17 for hour after hour as she brayed.

Eventually the sun rose. Camel 17 was still there.

Samburu had to depend on food aid during the most recent drought. Officials hope that in the next drought that won’t be necessary.

“The camel might have been thinking about where it came from,” Leleina said.

In the morning, more at ease, he let the newest addition to his herd go off. She needed to eat. The job of following her fell to Leleina’s 9-year-old daughter, and after the camel had been out for a while, Leleina decided to join her. So he set off in the direction of a red-rock table mountain, crunching through the scrub, occasionally coming upon bones, and moving closer to an area that he knew had foliage for camels and was free of predators. He heard nothing for five minutes, then 10, and then shouted his daughter’s name.

“Nashenjo,” he shouted.

Then a minute later:

“Nashenjo!”

He heard an animal noise.

“The camels are not far from here,” he said.

In a circle of trees, he saw not only Camel 17, but a half-dozen other camels — craning their necks from branch to branch. A few of the camels were his. Others belonged to a neighbor. It was a critical mass of camels in a place that had once belonged almost entirely to cattle, and the ranks only figured to grow. A day earlier, at the same time of the distribution, a neighbor’s camel had gone into labor. Leleina’s neighbors had crouched at the camel’s side, pulling out the healthy baby by the legs.

Leleina sat down at the base of a tree and watched the animals eat. Camel 17 was still skinny, but that was understandable, he said. She needed time to recover. Her trip to get here had been 100-odd miles, seven days, three stops for water, and even in that journey he saw why she was suited for her new home.

“She’s a survivor,” he said.