The newer paper looked at DNA samples from past studies across Australia, including more than 600 previously unpublished data samples. The UNSW study builds on a 2019 paper by the team that found most wild canines in NSW are pure dingoes or dingo-dominant hybrids. “The program aligns with standard council procedures that are practised across many councils in Queensland.” “WTA’s annual wild dog management program within the Weipa township is conducted for the sole interest of public safety. Weipa Town Authority’s main priority is the health and safety of the community. “The wild dogs that are affecting Weipa township currently are bush bred animals of a mixed lineage. “The migration of wild dogs into the Weipa community at the end of each breeding season is an annual occurrence,” it said. Pressed further, Rio Tinto Weipa provided a short statement. A Rio Tinto official told Cape York Weekly they were “definitely not dingoes”. Rio Tinto Weipa and the Weipa Town Authority recently embarked on a “feral animal control” program that targeted “wild dogs”.īoth bodies did not believe they were killing dingoes. There are rare times when a dog might go bush, but it isn’t contributing significantly to the dingo population.” “They just aren’t established in the wild. “We don’t have a feral dog problem in Australia,” says Dr Kylie Cairns, a conservation biologist from UNSW Science and lead author of the study. Of the remaining one per cent, roughly half were dog-dominant hybrids, while the other half were feral dogs. The team found that 99 per cent of wild canines tested were pure dingoes or dingo-dominant hybrids (that is, a hybrid canine with more than 50 per cent dingo genes). This means immediately ending all baiting programs targeting “wild dogs”, including those led by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and its interstate equivalents, and an immediate suspension of all funding towards any programs initiatives intending to finance the killing of dingoes.The study, published last month in Australian Mammalogy, collates the results from over 5000 DNA samples of wild canines across the country, making it the largest and most comprehensive dingo data set to date. It’s the evidence we need to push for a far better national policy – one that truly protects dingoes. This new data is a nail in the coffin of all industries relying upon misleading rhetoric simply so they can adopt the easiest answer: widespread baiting over responsible animal husbandry. They have been subjected to violent rhetoric and strategic persecution campaigns for decades. Like American wolves once were, dingoes in Australia are simultaneously admired and reviled. Many of their populations are declining dramatically. Historically, our treatment of dingoes is remarkably similar to the persecution other apex predators have experienced elsewhere in the world. Baiting using 1080 poison, a chemical in the same restricted class as other infamous toxins like arsenic and cyanide, continues to this day. In 1902, this Act would be consolidated to include the strategic dropping of poison-laced baits. In NSW, the systematic and organised killing of dingoes can be traced to an 1852 Act crafted to “Facilitate and Encourage the Destruction of Native Dogs”. Trappers were (and continue to be) paid a small dividend for killing and scalping dingoes. Dingo hunting clubs were formed and bounty systems based on those previously imposed on the Tasmanian Tiger were soon initiated. Soon after European invasion, the mass killing of dingoes became a sport. This includes the production, preparation and purchase of 1080-laced baits.ĭingoes were among the first Australian species to be targeted with lethal control in a strategic manner. The plan was developed by the sheep and livestock industry and, in light of data indicating its key targets are dingoes (not “wild dogs”), its contents represent an attempt to strategically massage public perception in order to fund lethal control programs. The recently revised “National Wild Dog Action Plan”, a blueprint for control designed by a consortium of livestock peak bodies and replicated in all states except Tasmania, defines a “wild dog” as “all wild-living dogs which include dingoes, feral dogs and their hybrids“. The findings follow a similar 2019 study and represents the latest in a growing library of research presenting a potential PR nightmare for ongoing control programs, many of which explicitly target “wild dogs”.ĭespite being first described as a species in 1793, many jurisdictions use the terms “wild dog” and “dingo” interchangeably. A groundbreaking study led by researchers at the University of New South Wales and published this week in Australian Mammalogy has conclusively demonstrated that nearly 100% of all animals labelled “wild dogs” are genetically identifiable as dingoes.
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