Australia's first peer-reviewed animal welfare study into aerial shooting, released this week, provides strong evidence the technique is a humane method of controlling feral camels.

Published in the journal Wildlife Research, the study assessed over 900 camels killed during aerial control programs in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory between 2011 and 2013.

Researchers found 99.6 per cent of the animals shot from helicopters died of their injuries, with 83 per cent killed instantly and the remainder within an average of four seconds.

Veterinarian and lead author, Dr Jordan Hampton, says the study lends scientific weight to claims the technique is humane. A bullet wound is inspected on a camel shot during the study ( Jordan Hampton )

"It's probably the first time we've had quantitative results for aerial shooting, and certainly in feral camels," he said.

"Certainly compared to a lot of the other methods we have to cull pest animals, aerial shooting seems to generate quite good results.

"We're effectively operating on perceptions when it comes to how humane a lot of these wildlife management techniques are.

"So we've got the capacity to use scientific evaluation to reduce some of that uncertainty, and I think we should continue to apply rigorous science to any other methods which remain contentious."

Dr Hampton says the most important factor influencing animal welfare outcomes during aerial control is the shooter.

"A lot of the assumptions we had were relating to the gender of the animals, or the age, with the suspicion that younger animals may have suffered poorer animal welfare outcomes," he said.

"But the results certainly confirm that the performance of the shooter was by far the most important determinant. Listen Duration: 5 minutes 25 seconds 5 m Listen Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. The science behind aerial shooting ( Carmen Brown ) Download 2.5 MB

"Within that we have the skill of the shooter, the training, the fatigue and the equipment that the shooter is using.

"But most of the other animal measures we had, as well as the size of the animal herd, were very much unimportant when we ran the stats."

An unpublished study which examined aerial shooting of horses at Tempe Downs last year also made similar findings.

However, Dr Hampton says further research is needed to determine the effectiveness of the technique on other species.

"I think we did a fairly thorough coverage of camels, in that we were able to operate in three different states, " he said.

"We looked at a number of different shooters, and we went out in a number of operations.

"So I think with the large sample size generated there, we're pretty comfortable that those results are pretty indicative of where that method is at, for that species in the arid environment.

"But trying to extrapolate that to other species in other vegetation types, I think would be difficult at this stage."