WESTERN AUSTRALIAN

DINGO ASSOCIATION

 

DINGO MYTHS AND MORE 

 

A working and capable 'Sheep Dingo'  Not a marauding menace to the Pastoral industry.


 

This Dingo  Sheep Dog belongs to  Narrogin man,  Geoffrey Blight and author of a 'Let my dogs be my witness'  Geoff has worked dingoes with sheep for many years. He now has a team of ducks and foxes as well as sheep and dingoes in a traveling show he takes round to show how animals and birds can work together.

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The Dingo

Australia's Native Wolf

DingoWolf.org

 

Please

SAVE OUR DINGO!

The Australian dingo is a unique family-orientated predator that has lived on this continent for thousands of years and evolved alongside native prey species to establish efficient and well balanced ecosystems.

Our dingo is the only remaining large predator in Australia capable of keeping our wildlife healthy by keeping prey and pest species in check. Unfortunately, like our Tasmanian tiger in our shameful past, he is being vilified and killed off by powerful rural and hunting lobbies that clasp an abundance of ignorance, cruelty and greed.

Paying the ultimate price of insufficient action by the government to protect our wildlife, the Tasmanian tiger is now forever gone. Our dingo is currently the only native animal to be classified as "vermin", and is being regularily baited with the aerially dropped super-toxin 1080. In Victoria, there is even a $50 bounty in place on their scalps. If we do not pressure our government to take immediate action to protect our dingo, he will join the Tasmanian tiger as an extinct animal our future generations will only be able to marvel at in old photographs.

As part of their campaign to exterminate our dingo, rural lobbies spread myths to mislead the public about the real nature of the animals. This makes efforts to drive dingoes to extinction easier by eliminating resistance. The following are some of the most common myths perpetuated, along with descriptions of what represents reality:

 

Myth #1

"Dingoes decimate native wildlife and ruin ecosystems."

Reality: Scientific studies of ecosystem conditions on either side of the dingo fence contradict this claim. On the side where dingoes are absent, kangaroos, wallabies, foxes and cats are overpopulating and destroying vegetation and endangered small marsupials. On the "useless" side where dingoes are present, kangaroo and wallaby populations remain healthy and balanced, allowing vegetation to regenerate; Foxes and cats are also suppressed as a result of predation by dingoes, allowing small marsupials to thrive.

Our dingo is beyond doubt Australia's keystone predator: The species which preys on the weak and sick of the most adundant prey species, keeping herbivore species from overpopulating and outcompeting one another. Dingoes have been doing this job successfully for thousands of years. With this in mind, it is absurd to suggest that they would suddenly pose a threat to wildlife."

Myth #2

"Dingoes are utterly devastating our sheep industry."

Reality: The reported annual losses of sheep to wild dogs in Victoria and New South Wales are at only around 3600 and 1200. Given that Victoria and New South Wales house upwards of 20,000,000 and 35,200,000 sheep, these losses could barely even be represented by a crumb on a pie chart or a percentage of just 0.02%. Vastly more sheep are lost per month during live export trips.

Livestock losses to wild dogs cost nowhere near as much as the continual baiting of our dingoes with the super-toxin 1080, and show that there really is no "wild dog problem" in Australia that can't be solved by compensating farmers for losses and/or making them practice more sensible husbandry using protective mesaures such as flock guardians and exclusion fencing.

Myth #3

"Dingoes are not native, and have been proven to be just introduced feral domestic dogs from Asia. Therefore they are pests that need to be exterminated."

Reality: Various studies on geological records and samples of dingo mitochondrial DNA have shown that our dingo has been present on the Australian continent for at least 3,500 years, probably up to about 12,000 years. This is a very long time in the context of evolution and has been sufficient for the dingo to evolve and adapt to the Australian environment. By any official definition, the dingo is "native".

How the ancestor of dingoes, shown to be the pale-footed Indian wolf (Canis lupus pallipes or Canis indica) by skull morphology studies, arrived in Australia is unknown, can only be speculated about and does not change the fact that dingoes are essential components of Australian ecoystems that must be protected if we wish to preserve our wildlife.

Because dingoes still retain most characteristics present in Indian wolves, it is also highly unlikely that they were subjected to any significant form of domestication that would warrant labelling them as "feral". Dingoes truly are Australia's own form of wolf.

Myth #4

"Dingoes are vicious killers that attack humans unprovoked."

Reality: You can count the number of fatal attacks of dingoes on humans in our entire recorded history on just half a hand. Compare this to about 15,000 domestic dog attacks per annum.

Dingoes, like wolves in other parts of the world, have an inherent fear and distrust of humans. They generally avoid confrontations with people and flee at the slightest hint of trouble. This is considered by some scientists to be the result of wide-scale persecution of wolves by humans that began with the dawn of agriculture.

The only incidents of "attacks" on humans by dingoes are recorded in areas where they are habituated to humans by irresponsible people, such as on Fraser Island. In those incidents the dingoes have lost much of their fear of humans as a result of feeding, and behaved more boldly when feeling threatened. There are also incidents of habituated juvenile dingoes attempting to play with people, which are misinterpreted as attacks.

Myth #5

"Pure dingoes are largely extinct, so there is nothing left worth perserving."

Reality: Studies of wild dogs caught in Victoria have supported the notion that the act of mating between wild dingoes and domestic dogs, and consequent successful rearing of the offspring, is actually a very rare occurance due to the harshness of life in the wild and radical behavioural and biological differences.

Because of this, most hybrids caught only contain a few domestic dog genes and perform the same crucial ecological role that pure dingoes do. Hybridization with domestic dogs is a process that has occurred for wild canine species throughout the world for thousands of years without hampering their survival.

 

Please have the courage to defend Australia's endangered native wolf before it is too late!

Please contact the federal and state ministers for the environment and demand that our dingo be removed from the vermin list and classed as a protected native species instead.

 

Gavin Jennings - Victorian Minister of Environment

Address: Level 22, 50 Lonsdale St, Melbourne 3002

Phone: (03) 9096 8830

Fax: (03) 9096 8866

Email: gavin.jennings@parliament.vic.gov.au

Malcolm Turnbull - Federal Minister of Environment

Address: PO Box 1840, Bondi Junction NSW 1355

Phone: (02) 9369 5221

Fax: (02) 9369 5225

Email: malcolm.turnbull.MP@aph.gov.au

 

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